Suspicion

17

Special Agent Yeager was holding a BlackBerry against his ear when Danny returned.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah.”

He glanced at Danny quickly, like he was a dead mouse his cat had just brought in. “Well, that’s not going to happen,” he said into his phone.

Yeager waved Danny in without looking at him again.

When the door clicked shut behind them, Yeager ended his call and stuck out a hand. He shook Danny’s hand with a paw like a broken-in baseball glove.

“You’re doing the right thing.”

Danny said nothing. Like I have a choice.

“Let’s get your signature on the dotted line so we can get moving,” Yeager said, guiding Danny down the hall. A burnt-toast smell lingered in the air as they passed a break room: microwave, small cube refrigerator, a Keurig coffeemaker, a jumbo box of coffee pods from a discount shopping club. Boisterous laughter came from behind a closed door across the hall. A staff meeting of some sort.

The agent with the shoe-polish hair, Slocum, was sitting at the table in the same conference room where they’d met before. This time he was sorting through a sheaf of papers arrayed in front of him like playing cards in a game of solitaire.

“Well, look who’s back,” said Slocum. “Have a seat. Get comfortable. This is going to take a while. We need to take a complete personal history.”

“For what?”

“For our debriefing report to headquarters,” Yeager said. “We gotta make a case for how we think you can help us.”

“What’s to debrief?” asked Danny.

“Standard procedure for all sn-uh, confidential informants,” said Slocum.

“You almost said snitches.”

“Old habit.” He smiled nastily.

“Kind of hard for me to be a snitch if I don’t actually work for the cartel,” Danny pointed out.

Slocum let out a long sigh.

After forty-five minutes and a stack of multipart forms, they’d finished the biographical questions. Then they asked him to sketch out a floor plan for Galvin’s house, or at least as much of it as he’d seen. They asked him to recall as many details about Galvin’s home office as he could: door placement, windows, how many computers, what kind of electronic equipment. Every single item on top of Galvin’s desk. Danny was quietly pleased at how much he was able to recall. The two agents took turns. One asked the questions while the other went for coffee or water or a potty break.

“Why do you need to know all this?” Danny asked at one point.

Slocum, the bad cop, said, “Why don’t you let us ask the questions.”

“Did you ever see him place a call on a landline?” Yeager asked.

“Actually, no. Just his mobile phone. His BlackBerry.”

“And you’re sure it was a BlackBerry? It didn’t look bulkier or different in any way?”

“I didn’t get that close a look.”

“Do you have his cell number? Of his BlackBerry, I mean.”

Danny nodded. He took out his iPhone, went into his contacts and read off Galvin’s number.

“Did you notice whether he did any texting?”

“I don’t think I could tell the difference between texting and making a call,” Danny said. “Why? What do you need to know all this for?”

“We need to know who he’s talking to and what he’s saying,” said Yeager.

“So tap his phones.”

“Brilliant idea,” said Slocum, getting up. “Why didn’t I think of that?” He shook his head in mordant amusement and walked out of the room.

“What makes you think we haven’t done that?” said Yeager. “The problem is, the cartels have gotten too smart. They never discuss business over phone lines that aren’t encrypted.”

“Did it ever occur to you guys that maybe the reason Galvin doesn’t talk cartel business over the phone is because he’s not doing any cartel business?”

Yeager seemed to be suppressing a smirk. “We’ve picked up an encrypted signal going out over one of his landlines, probably in his home office.”

“So?”

“There’s a reason he’s using encryption.”

Danny shrugged. “You guys can’t break it?”

“Not so simple. You’ve been reading too many spy novels.”

“No such thing as reading too many spy novels.”

They asked for his iPhone and installed a couple of apps on it. One was ChatSecure. It used an encryption protocol called Off-the-Record. It allowed them to send and receive text messages securely.

“We’ve given you a Gmail account to use.”

“I already have one.”

“Don’t use it. Not for messaging us. Use this one.” He wrote on a yellow Post-it: JayGould1836@gmail.com.

“If you want to use Google Talk for messaging, use that account.”

“Jay Gould,” Danny said. “You’ve done your homework.”

“And 1836-”

“Is the year he was born, yes, I know. And what makes you think Galvin’s going to open up to me?”

“We don’t think that,” Yeager said. “Of course he won’t.”

“So what do you need me for?”

“For this.”

Slocum’s voice, triumphant. He’d appeared in the doorway, a white cardboard box in his hand instead of a cup of coffee. He swooped in and put the box on the table in front of Danny. It looked like a bakery box, like it was intended to hold pastries, maybe a half dozen cupcakes. He opened the flaps and pulled out a little sculpture. A cheesy-looking repro of Rodin’s The Thinker, the kind of thing you’d find at a flea market. It even had a fake patina of green over black to make it look like the bronze original in the Musée Rodin, oxidized from decades of Paris rain. It was meant to be used as a bookend. It was a curio. It was a piece of crap.

“What’s this?” Danny said.

“A gift,” Slocum said. “You’re going to give it to Galvin as a token of your gratitude for the generous loan.”

“A… bookend? Is it at least part of a pair?”

“What you see is what you get,” Slocum said. “It’s a room bug. There’s a GSM listening device built in. Transmits over cellular service.”

Yeager said, “Since we can’t decrypt the phone signal, our best hope is to plant a listening device in the room itself. Listen to his end of the conversation at least. We’ll monitor it for thirty days. Then we’re required to report back to the court.”

“A single bookend,” Danny said. “Why would I give him a bookend? That’s weird.”

Yeager shrugged. “It’s a… a thing. A piece of art or whatever. It’s what the technical boys came up with.”

“You guys are serious about this? I’m supposed to give him this garage-sale, flea-market piece of junk as a thank-you gift? You think he’s going to put something like this on his desk? You must think he’s some goombah out of The Sopranos. The guy has sophisticated tastes. He’s not going to put this on his desk. This is an embarrassment. It’s not even a good copy.”

“He won’t want to offend you,” Yeager said. “He’ll keep it on his desk in case you look for it next time you visit.”

“He barely knows me. He’s not afraid of hurting my feelings. He’ll toss it before I pull out of his driveway.”

“Possibly,” conceded Yeager. “Or not.”

“You got a better idea?” said Slocum, a challenge.

Danny shrugged. “At least make it an eagle.”

“An eagle.” Slocum gave a scornful laugh.

“The Boston College mascot.”

“That’s a thought,” Yeager told Slocum. “Not a bad idea.”

“That’ll delay us a couple days at least,” Slocum replied. “The tech boys have to locate an eagle and then fit it.”

“It’s worth the wait,” Yeager replied.

“Forget it,” Danny said. “He isn’t likely to put it on his desk anyway.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Yeager said. “This is going to take some rethinking in any case.”

“Why do you need me anyway?” Danny asked. “Don’t you have a team that can do some sort of covert entry into the Galvins’ house one night when they’re out and plant listening devices?”

“That option was considered and discarded,” said Yeager. “Galvin’s house is never unoccupied, even when the family’s gone. There are always servants. Plus a state-of-the-art security system.”

“And you guys can’t get around that?”

“It’s not feasible,” Yeager said. “No way to do a B &E without detection in that house. Plus, the moment they suspect an intrusion, they’ll have the place swept and sterilized. Whenever you do an operation like that, you have to be extremely careful about the law of unintended consequences.”

“Meaning what?” said Danny.

“Sometimes things go to shit,” said Slocum.

Danny swallowed hard. “You don’t want me doing this. It’s way too risky. Talk about unintended consequences. You want a professional. I don’t have the right skill set.”

“Actually, you’ve got the single most important qualification,” Yeager said. “Access. The man seems to trust you.”

“My only ‘qualification,’ as you put it, is that my daughter’s a friend of his daughter’s. But frankly, if what you say is true, I don’t like the idea of her spending time over there anymore.”

Yeager leaned over and placed his catcher’s-mitt hand on Danny’s wrist. “Absolutely no changes. This is crucial. It’s extremely important that you don’t alter any patterns. If you suddenly won’t let your daughter go over to the Galvins’, he’ll get suspicious.”

“And what happens if he catches me planting some bug in his office-what then? What if he somehow discovers the transmitter? What happens to me? What happens to my daughter?”

“So don’t get caught,” said Slocum.

Yeager said, “Nothing’s going to happen to your daughter.”

“And what if the word gets out that I’m cooperating with the goddamned DEA? If you guys have a leak? What if someone blabs to someone and Galvin gets wind of it? And he finds out I’ve planted a bug inside his house?”

“Don’t borrow trouble,” said Yeager. “We’ll worry about that if and when it happens. But it won’t. Everything will be fine.”

“What happened to the law of unintended consequences?” Danny said.

Both DEA agents fell silent for a long moment. A smiled played about the corners of Slocum’s mouth.

“There’s absolutely no reason to worry,” Yeager said.

But even he didn’t sound convinced.

18

The text came two days later.

On his laptop, actually. A tritone sounded, reverbing fuzzily like a vibraphone. A window opened on his laptop’s screen, asking whether he’d accept a digital fingerprint, an encryption key. The window was full of gibberish, a block of meaningless characters.

The sender was AnonText007@gmail.com.

He clicked yes, and then a text message popped right up: 7 p.m., IHOP, Soldiers Field Rd, NE corner pkg lot.

A meet had been set for the parking lot of the International House of Pancakes in Brighton.

Danny had already begun to hope the DEA had lost interest in him. That they’d finally realized it wasn’t such a good idea to press such a rank amateur into service. Too risky. Too many unintended consequences.

With a sense of foreboding he typed OK, and clicked SEND.

He knew he couldn’t tell Abby about the DEA.

She was a teenager, a member of the Oversharing Generation who documented their every move on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. She could never be expected to keep a secret like this. Her best friend’s father was a financier for a Mexican drug cartel? Her own dad was being blackmailed into gathering information on the Galvins? She’d be incredulous, then outraged, and most of all buzzing with excitement. Her need to tell Jenna would be an uncontrollable reflex.

Lucy was a different story. She was the soul of discretion. He trusted her absolutely. She’d never gossip; she knew how to keep a secret.

But when he called her that afternoon, he found himself unable to tell her the astonishing latest.

“Luce, baby, I’m going to be late for dinner tonight.”

“What about Abby?”

“Home, as far as I know. Not at the Galvins’.”

The complexities of their living arrangements had been worked out over time. With her son, Kyle, away at Bowdoin, Lucy was an empty nester. She disliked rattling around her Brookline condo, making dinner for one. She preferred spending time as a family with Danny and Abby on Marlborough Street.

She wasn’t Abby’s mom, and she wasn’t a substitute. She was Daddy’s girlfriend, not an authority figure. Yet in a sense she was Abby’s girlfriend, too: kind of a big sister. What might have been awkward in another family seemed to work fairly well, maybe because Lucy was a psychiatrist and knew where the land mines were and how to sidestep them.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll fix something with Abby, then. What’s up?”

He was ready with a lie. “An old friend of mine’s in town and wanted to pick my brain. He’s got some idea for a book. I think he wants publishing advice, which generally means how he can get an agent.”

“Who’s that?”

“You don’t know him-guy named Art? Art Nava?”

“I don’t know the name. From Columbia?”

“Nah, I met him through Sarah. A million years ago. Anyway. You two just go ahead and have dinner without me.”

Art Nava was a high school friend of his from Wellfleet, someone he hadn’t talked to, even thought of, since high school graduation. Why he’d chosen that name, he had no idea.

All he knew for certain was that he wanted to protect Lucy from the dangerous swerve his life had taken, to keep her innocent and uninvolved. To take this on alone and not endanger the woman he loved so much. It felt like the right thing to do.

But it was the first time he’d ever lied to her, and he was sure it wouldn’t be the last.

At five minutes before seven that evening, Danny was sitting in his car in the parking lot of the International House of Pancakes in Brighton. The lot was mostly empty: The pancake chain’s “eat breakfast for dinner” campaign had never worked in a big way-but a steady trickle of cars came in and out. The white noise whoosh of traffic from Soldiers Field Road was rhythmic, almost lulling. Or it might have been lulling, in another setting, at another time.

Because he didn’t know what to expect, and he hated uncertainty. He was to park in the northeast corner of the IHOP lot by seven o’clock.

They would find him.

He waited. A few spaces away, a red Jeep Grand Cherokee was parked. It probably belonged to an employee, maybe a manager. The other cars in the lot were clustered much closer to the restaurant.

Whenever a car pulled in, he looked up, watched to see if it was headed toward him. By 7:05 he’d watched a total of five cars enter the lot and three leave. None of them came anywhere near. The agent he’d talked to on the phone-Yeager, the less obnoxious of the two-had been emphatic about punctuality. He’d give them another five minutes and then leave.

His cell phone made a strange bling sound. It displayed the words ENCRYPTED CHAT RECEIVED. He unlocked the phone and read the message. Look to your right, it said. Take the side door. No key necessary.

He looked to the right, saw no one and nothing.

For a moment he didn’t understand. Then he saw, maybe twenty feet away, a motel. The CHARLES RIVER MOTEL, a sign said. A black side door with white trim. He hadn’t paid any attention to the building, but there it was, closer than the IHOP.

Then another bling, and a new text message: Room 126. First room on your right.

He got out, slammed the car door, looked around briefly. A low set of concrete steps leading into the motel, bracketed by hedges. You were supposed to insert a key card into a slot to open the door, but when he pulled the handle toward him, it came right open. Someone had jammed the door lock. The hallway was dim and smelled of diapers. He could hear babies crying, multiple babies in multiple rooms. He wondered if this was one of those hotels that the state had taken over for overflow low-income housing. The first door on the right was numbered 126. He knocked once, and it came right open.

Slocum, the one with the Just for Men Jet Black hair and the pointed face of a fox, at the door. Danny entered, and Slocum closed the door behind him without saying a word. Yeager was sitting in the corner. The curtains were closed, and the only light came from a single desk lamp.

“Daniel.”

“Seven o’clock sharp, huh?” Danny said. “I guess you meant government time.”

Yeager shook his head slowly, and said, “The precautions are for your own safety.” He held out a small, dark blue velvet bag.

Danny took it. Something heavy but small was inside.

“Careful,” Yeager said. “It’s just been calibrated. We don’t want it to get out of whack.”

Danny tipped out a large metallic disc that looked like a coin. It was a bronze medal that bore the inscription COLLEGIUM BOSTONIENSE.

“Look familiar?” Yeager said.

Danny nodded. “I think so.”

“It’s an exact replica of the Boston College President’s Medal he’s already got, only it’s made from resin.”

He weighed it in his palm. It was heavy and cold, even felt solid, like a real medal. “This is a transmitter?”

Yeager nodded once. “A GSM-based monitoring device. Sound- activated. Calls us when it detects sound in the room so we can listen in. But you get the hard job. You have to swap it for the original.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“Figure it out,” Slocum said.

Danny turned and said to Slocum, “I’ve been in the guy’s home office exactly once. Call me crazy, but if he really does cartel business in there, I have a feeling he might not want me wandering around in there by myself.”

Slocum gave a sour smile and looked away like he was bored.

Yeager said, “It shouldn’t take you more than a few seconds. You just need to find the right opportunity.”

“Simple as that,” Danny said. They were an odd duo, he thought, the two DEA agents. Yeager’s manner was studious to the point of affectation, but beneath it, like traces of old paint, a palimpsest, was something rough-hewn, crude, and nasty.

“Notify us when you’ve placed it,” Yeager said.

“How?”

“Secure text message. Use your Jay Gould account. We’ll reach out to you the same way.”

“Then am I done?”

Slocum folded his arms. “If we get what we need, sure.”

“And what if he catches me?”

“Don’t get caught,” said Slocum.

“Thanks,” said Danny. “But I’m an amateur. I’ve never done anything remotely like this.”

“It’s not difficult,” Yeager said. “We’ll give you step-by-step instructions.”

“Wonderful,” Danny said in a flat tone. “But you still haven’t answered my question. What if I get caught?”

“I wasn’t kidding,” Slocum said. “Try real hard not to get caught. These Sinaloa guys, they’re careful and they’re ruthless. There’s a reason Galvin’s driver doubles as his bodyguard.”

“That guy’s his bodyguard?” Danny said. “Who’s Galvin afraid of?”

“The competition,” said Yeager. “Other cartels. These guys don’t screw around.”

“Just be prudent,” Slocum said, “and you have nothing to worry about.”

19

Rex’s tail thumped against the floor when Danny returned home. He was curled up at Lucy’s feet as she sat on the couch working. He didn’t even try to get up.

“That didn’t take long,” Lucy said. “I hope you didn’t scare him off.”

“Scare who off?”

“Art Whatever. Your friend the wannabe writer.”

It took Danny a moment. His nerves were still vibrating like a plucked string. “Oh, right. No, he just wanted to know some basic stuff, you know-how to get an agent, all that. The usual.”

“What kind of book does he want to write?”

Lying to her was bad enough, but now having to elaborate on the lie was even worse. “I don’t even think I could tell you. He didn’t have a very clear idea himself. Hold on, let me say hi to Abby.” He’d noticed her backpack on the floor.

Abby was sitting on her bed, MacBook in her lap, tapping away.

“Hey, Boogie, how was school?”

“Hey, Daddy,” she said without looking up. “It was all right.”

“How was precalc?”

“It was great. I won the Nobel Prize for calculus.”

“Yeah? Do you have to go to Oslo or Stockholm for that one? I always forget.”

She shook her head distractedly, done with the game.

“Am I interrupting your homework?”

“Yeah, but it’s fine.”

“Writing a research paper about Facebook?” He could see enough of the screen to recognize the Facebook logo.

“Did you want something, Daddy?”

“How’s Jenna?”

“Fine.”

“You planning on going over there tomorrow?”

She looked up. “I don’t know, why?”

“Because I’d love to be looped in on your social plans.”

“Ha ha ha. Is this about how I’m spending too much time over there? I mean, I was home for dinner and you weren’t, so I’m just saying.”

“Someone’s being a little oversensitive.” He could see this starting to spin into an argument, so he tried to reel it back in. “They’re great, aren’t they? I can’t blame you for wanting to hang out with them.”

“I don’t ‘hang out’ with them, I hang with Jenna.”

“Chillax, baby.”

“‘Chillax’? What are you, like a bro now?”

“I meant it ironically. So what’s Esteban like?”

“Their driver? I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to him. He’s a good driver, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He was about to ask whether Esteban carried a gun, but then thought better of it.

“I’m sure he is. He doesn’t have to take you home all the time. I can pick you up, some days.”

“I thought you don’t like driving out to Weston, and losing your parking space.”

“I’m happy to pick you up. We need to spend more time together, you and me.”

She shrugged, went back to her tapping. “Whatever.”

“Anyway, I’ll be doing some research at Wellesley College, so it’s convenient.”

She nodded.

Somehow he had to get himself back inside the Galvins’ house. He couldn’t exactly invite himself over. There was no plausible reason for him to see the inside of Tom Galvin’s home office again any time soon.

Unless he could think of an excuse. A reason to come over again that didn’t sound contrived or bogus.

The right opportunity. He hoped it would come soon.

20

The next day, Abby texted him from school: ok if I study with Jenna after school?

Instead of the usual, mild annoyance, he felt a strange sort of relief. Home for supper? he texted back.

Her answer came almost immediately: Sure!

He texted back: I’ll pick you up.

Her answer came half a minute later: Thanks! But that’s ok, Esteban can drive me home.

He thought for a moment, then texted: I’ll be out there anyway, remember?

Adults tended to text, Danny had noticed, like they were sending a telegram: short and terse. Kids, who had no idea what a telegram was, texted as if they were writing e-mail, conversational and slangy. Then again, Abby and her friends considered e-mail as archaic as writing on foolscap with a quill.

Her text came back: ok?

Meaning: Okay, if you insist, though I don’t really get it. She’d forgotten that he’d told her he was doing research at Wellesley College. Or maybe she didn’t hear it the first time. It was like the old Peanuts animated cartoons, whenever a teacher or parent talked to Charlie Brown or his friends. You never heard actual words. You heard the mwa mwa mwa mwa of a trombone. Half the time, that was how Danny suspected his voice sounded to Abby.

He texted back, Pick you up @ 6.

Thanks! came her reply.

Then, at around five thirty, when he was about to leave for Weston, his iPhone made the tritone fanfare announcing the arrival of a new text. He glanced at the screen. It was from Abby: OK if I stay for dinner?

Danny thought for a long moment. He could always say no, pick her up at six as planned. If he said yes, it wouldn’t be plausible that he’d still be in the area later on. She’d want to have the Galvins’ driver, Esteban, take her back to Boston.

The phone nagged a tritone reminder.

He decided not to reply. He’d learned how the mind of a sixteen-year-old worked. She’d assume the answer was yes unless she was told otherwise.

At just before six, he was standing in front of the Galvins’ castle door. He rang the bell. As he waited, another tritone text bleated. He didn’t look at it. He knew it had to be from Abby. Only Lucy or Abby ever texted him.

The door opened after a minute or so. Celina Galvin was wearing skinny jeans and a purple V-neck sweater. At her feet, the bat-faced hairless dogs scurried and scampered and yapped.

“Oh, Daniel, I’m so sorry! Abby didn’t tell you she’s having dinner with us?”

“Is that right?” A delicious smell wafted from the interior.

He knew exactly what she was going to say next. At some houses, you’d never hear the words. But Celina was Mexican, and Mexican hospitality is legendary.

“Can you stay for dinner?” she said. “Please?”

It was just four of them: Celina, Jenna, Abby, and Danny. Brendan was back at his dorm room at BC, and Ryan had returned to his apartment in Allston, where he lived with a girlfriend he still hadn’t brought around to meet the parents and probably never would. (“For me it’s fine,” Celina said. “He knows she’s not the right one, so why do I have to waste my time being nice to her?”)

They all sat at one end of the long farm table. The family cook, a stout gray-haired woman named Consuelo, ladled sopa de frijoles, black bean soup, into colorful ceramic bowls.

“Daddy, I’m sorry, I definitely texted you!” Abby said.

“Oh, when I was in the archives I put my phone on Do Not Disturb mode. Must have missed it. It’s no big deal. Anyway, I get to have another great dinner at the Galvins’.”

“Abby,” Celina said, “you know Esteban will take you home. Your father shouldn’t have to come all the way out here to pick you up.”

“Not a problem,” he said. “I was in the area anyway.” Before she could ask why, he said, “Is Tom still at work?”

“He has a client dinner in town. Oh, what kind of hostess am I? You are a big wine drinker, yes? Consuelo? ¿Podría obtener una buena botella de vino tinto para el caballero?”

“I’m fine. I don’t have wine every night.”

A few minutes later, he asked to use their bathroom.

He hadn’t seen one off the kitchen, but there were a lot of rooms and a lot of doors and it was always possible a bathroom adjoined the kitchen. But he didn’t think so. “It’s just out there down the hall, on the right.” Celina waved at the corridor along which Galvin had taken him to his home office. “Oh, let me show you. People get lost sometimes. It’s very confusing, this crazy house.”

“Not at all,” he said firmly. He got up and pulled out his iPhone. “If I get lost, I’ll call for directions.”

The half bath was only twenty or thirty feet down the hall. Its door wasn’t visible from the end of the farm table, where everyone had been sitting. He passed it, went a little farther down the hall and then took a right. Another fifty feet or so and he’d reached Tom Galvin’s study.

The door was open.

The lights were off. The waning sun cast an amber light. Dust motes hung in the air.

The medal sat in its case near the edge of Galvin’s desk, the side that faced visitors. Danny wondered how many people came to visit him here. And who. Was it here that he did his cartel business?

If he did any.

He entered the room, braced for the spotlights overhead to go on, activated by motion. But it didn’t. The room remained shadowed. He didn’t want to risk putting the lights on.

He took out his iPhone, set the flash function on the camera to ON, and snapped a few quick pictures of Galvin’s desk and the area around it. With each shutter sound, a pale light danced and blinked.

Galvin’s medal was smaller than he remembered. He hoped the decoy in his pocket, the one he was supposed to swap it for, was the right size.

His heartbeat sounded thunderously loud.

He reached out a hand and grasped the edge of the medal with trembling fingers. It was cold, and thicker than he’d expected.

It wouldn’t come out of its case.

The blood rushed in his ears, so loud now that he could hear nothing else. Just the whoosh of blood and the rapid, accelerating tattoo of his heart. His fingers closed around the medal and grabbed it and tried to turn it, tried to pry it loose, but it was seated firmly. Too firmly. Was it somehow cemented down, not meant to be removed?

He felt a cold, unpleasant prickling at the back of his neck.

It came loose. Finally, it came out. The medal was thick and heavy and cold. He slipped it into the right breast pocket of his suit jacket.

From his left pocket he took the replacement, warm from his body heat, and noticeably lighter than the original.

The tremor in his fingers had become even more obvious.

Please, God, he thought, let it be the right size.

He placed it over the round inset in the red velvet and saw that it was a fraction of an inch too big.

It didn’t fit in the case.

His heart raced wildly. He felt nauseated.

Now what? Give up? Put the original back in the case and tell the DEA agents they’d screwed up the measurements?

When would he ever have a chance like this again?

With both thumbs he pressed down hard on the fake medal, tried to seat it into the round inset, which refused to yield. He pushed harder-was he wrecking the delicate electronics of the listening device?-until it went down all the way, right into the inset, mashing it slightly.

But it was seated snugly. The red velvet around it puckered downward slightly, like the lines around an old man’s mouth.

The medal was slightly turned. The D in the Roman numerals at the medal’s outer edge, MDCCCLXIII, should have been centered on the midline, but it was off slightly so that the third C was at the centerpoint.

But he didn’t dare take it out and reposition it. There wasn’t time-with every second the chances that someone would catch him in here increased-and taking it out and mashing it down one more time might mangle the red velvet noticeably.

Then he realized that he hadn’t paid any attention to how the medal had been placed in there originally. Maybe it was turned one way or another. He had no recollection.

But would Galvin notice a tiny detail like that? It seemed unlikely.

He let out a long, silent breath. Backed away from the desk.

And heard the familiar raspy voice.

“Can you believe Grill 23 was closed tonight?” said Tom Galvin.

21

Danny felt his entire body jolt. He let out an involuntary cry, a sort of strangled yip.

Galvin laughed. “Didn’t mean to startle you like that.”

“Hey. You had-I thought you had a dinner with a client.”

“The guy had his heart set on Grill 23-some friend of his said they serve the best steak in Boston-and I kept telling him, you know, Abe & Louie’s, you can’t go wrong there, I like their steaks even better, and you can’t go wrong with Capital Grille, either. But no, he says his wife won’t let him do red meat more than once a month, and he’s not wasting his monthly allotment on any steak except Grill 23’s. So we had a drink and rescheduled.”

“Well, since you’ve caught me skulking around your office, I might as well come out and ask.”

“Ask…?” In the gloom, Galvin’s eyes were inscrutable.

“I wanted to surprise you. Those amazing cigars-what are they called again? I wanted to get you a box of them. Least I could do to thank you.”

Galvin switched the overhead lights on and took a few steps into the room. He gave a small, crooked smile. “They haven’t moved.” He gave a casual wave toward the overstuffed leather chairs in front of his desk. Danny glanced. On the end table next to one of them was the black lacquer box, COHIBA BEHIKE in gold letters on its lid. The gold glittered in the overhead spotlight. “I appreciate the thought, but you don’t really want to spend half the money I lent you on cigars, now do you? That box cost close to twenty thousand bucks, Danny boy. It was a gift-I wouldn’t spend that kind of money on cigars. Come on.”

“O-o-oh, I see. No, I don’t think so.” He chuckled.

“Appreciate the thought, though. I hope you’re staying for dinner.”

Danny couldn’t decide if he was pleased or dismayed at how smoothly he’d just lied. Maybe both.

But that strange feeling was quickly overwhelmed by a low hum of anxiety. He was certain Galvin knew he was lying.

22

“You left the lights on,” Abby said.

As he put the key in the lock, he noticed the spill of light under his apartment door.

Then he remembered. Yesterday, Lucy had offered to pick up sushi for the three of them-California roll and such for Abby, no raw fish-for dinner tonight.

“Oh, shit.”

Lucy was on her laptop at the dining table. Arrayed around her were clear plastic trays with decorative green plastic blades of grass and rows of sliced sushi rolls. The remains of a glass of white wine.

“I’m guessing you guys already ate.”

“I screwed up. My bad, Lucy. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t look angry or even particularly annoyed. She smiled as if secretly amused, shook her head. Maybe a little annoyed. “There’s plenty left. But it won’t be any good tomorrow. Unagi, Abby? It’s cooked.”

“I’m good,” she said. “Daddy, you didn’t tell her you were at Wellesley College?”

“Why Wellesley?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah, there’s an archive there…” His voice trailed off. Another lie.

“The Jay Gould archive,” Abby announced.

Thanks, kid, he thought. You basically have no idea what I do for a living and suddenly you’re doing the play-by-play color commentary?

“There’s a Jay Gould archive at Wellesley?” Lucy said. “You’re kidding. That I never would have expected. The letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Jay Gould, together under one roof. Who knew?”

“It’s just the letters between Gould and one of his wives,” Danny said, and added hastily, “How was your day?”

“It was fine,” Lucy said distantly, but the way she furrowed her brow made Danny’s stomach do a little flip. She knew him too well.

With both his daughter and his girlfriend at home, there wasn’t much privacy. He waited until Abby had gone into her room and Lucy was in the shower, then he sat down at his desk in the living room, loaded a program the DEA agents had given him called Adium, and signed on to the JayGould1836@gmail.com account.

He composed a text to AnonText007@gmail.com. Just three words: device in place. He stared at it for a few seconds.

A window opened: OTR FINGERPRINT VERIFICATION. The encryption “fingerprint” for the DEA agents. A box of gobbledygook popped up on his Gmail page. Fortunately, he didn’t have to know what the hell he was doing to make it work. He assumed it meant that his text messages to them were automatically encrypted, and theirs back. He clicked ACCEPT.

ENCRYPTED CHAT INITIATED. In other words, the text had gone through successfully.

Then he remembered about the pictures. He e-mailed to himself the photos he’d taken of Galvin’s desk. Saved them to his computer’s desktop. Then sent them to AnonText007@gmail.com.

And he was done.

The DEA boys would get the evidence they needed to arrest Tom Galvin. They’d arrest Celina’s husband, Jenna and Ryan and Brendan’s father.

He didn’t want to think about that, though. It came down to a very simple choice: Galvin’s family or his. That wasn’t exactly a difficult decision, was it?

Not that he cared about what might happen to Galvin. He hardly knew the guy. Even the man’s wife and kids-he didn’t know them, either. If Galvin were truly involved in criminal activity, he deserved to go to prison.

He signed off.

But he hated lying to the two women in his life.

He hadn’t lied to Abby since Sarah’s death. And then he’d had no choice. Sarah had insisted.

Sarah had wanted Abby to go to Camp Pocapawmet, on Cape Cod, that last summer, just as she’d gone every summer since she was eleven. And he’d gone along with it, but he’d said, You don’t want her around for…

Tearfully, Sarah had shot back, This is not the way I want her to remember her mommy. I don’t want her to remember me as a sick, dying woman. I want her to enjoy being a kid. A couple of weeks of just being a kid. Carefree and happy. Because when I go, everything will change for her.

But he didn’t want to lie to her.

Call it protection. Call it protecting her childhood. I don’t want a shadow to fall over that girl until it really has to.

So he’d lied, of course. Mommy had an infection in her lungs. She had to spend a little while in the hospital, and then she’d get better.

Meanwhile, Sarah went through round after brutal round of chemotherapy. Anthracycline and taxane. The chemo had to come before surgery. But it was stage-four cancer. The cancer had spread to the lymph nodes. The prognosis was poor.

There wasn’t even time for surgery. It all happened too fast.

And when everything turned for the worse at the beginning of August, when it had become clear that Sarah had days left, not weeks or months, Danny had picked Abby up at camp and told her Mommy was sick.

Abby lay in the hospital bed next to her mother, her arms around her mother’s belly as Sarah slept, the machines wheezing and beeping, both of them crying. For two days.

Danny knew that Sarah waited to die until Abby had gone home for the night. Danny knew she couldn’t bear to depart this earth in the embrace of her child.

So Abby’d had four worry-free weeks at camp before the shadow fell over her life.

At the time it felt like the right thing to do.

Danny loathed being trapped in this pointless lie about Jay Gould: one more lie he’d have to keep track of. But he decided not to speak of it again unless and until it came up.

Which of course it did, later that evening, as they lay in bed. Danny was rereading-well, reskimming, actually-an old book by Gustavus Myers called History of the Great American Fortunes, and Lucy was working on her laptop.

“He was married only once,” she said.

“Huh? Who?”

“Jay Gould. You said ‘one of his wives,’ but he married once, to Helen Day Miller, who died like three years before he did.” Wikipedia’s page for Jay Gould was open on her computer screen. She gave him a sidelong glance.

Why had he told her such an idiotic, sloppy lie? It was just the first thing that had sprung to his mind. He hadn’t given it a thought. “What made you look that up?”

“I remember when you first started working on the book, I read something about him, I was wondering why he was considered such an evil jerk, and I noticed he only married once. Not six times or something, which you’d expect. These days, anyway. And I thought, well, I guess the times were different then. Or maybe he was a good husband at least.”

“Did I say ‘one of’ his wives’? Long day. I misspoke.”

She flipped the laptop closed. “No, you didn’t, Danny. There aren’t any Jay Gould archives at Wellesley and-”

“Sweetie, listen. I told Abby I was doing work out there because I wanted to take her home myself. That’s all. I’m not comfortable with her being driven around by a chauffeur.”

“So why not just tell her that?”

“Obviously, I should have. I didn’t feel like setting off another argument.”

“God forbid you should get into an argument with someone.”

He shrugged. If you don’t want to be psychoanalyzed, don’t date a shrink. Lucy understood, long before he did, that he had a problem with anger. His problem was something that he never thought could possibly be considered a problem: He never gave in to anger. He felt it, sure, plenty of times. But he prided himself on his ability to suppress it. When an argument began, he’d always de-escalate. Holding anger in this way required great self-control, but he’d taught himself that self-control since childhood.

He’d learned by example. For years he’d thought that his father, Bud, had a short fuse.

But putting it that way, so bland and benign, made it sound normal. Bud Goodman in fact had no fuse. He was one of those chemical compounds, like liquid nitroglycerin or mercury fulminate, that would explode on impact. Danny had learned how to avoid the triggers that would set his father off, and there were many of them. Disobedience was one. Dishonesty. A raised voice.

Bud, who was a great carpenter, a fine craftsman, was constantly losing subcontractors. He’d tell them off, or just go after them in a hot flash of anger, until they quit. He lost plenty of clients that way, too. One lumberyard in Wellfleet refused to do business with him because he once tore into the yard manager, though Bud insisted that they were selling him short lots.

If you listened only to Bud Goodman’s side, his subs were a capricious and moody bunch, every last one of them. Danny learned quickly that there was always another side of the story, usually involving a Bud Goodman tantrum that ended in a mushroom cloud of rage.

Even when Sarah moved out, he didn’t understand that maybe he’d gone too far in the opposite direction. “For God’s sake, what’s wrong with you?” Sarah had snapped one day. “Do you not care what happens to us? Do you not even give a shit?”

“Come on,” he replied, making her point. “Let’s talk this through reasonably. No need to shout.”

Lucy once told him about a psychologist and marriage therapist named John Gottman who had identified what he called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. These were the four most destructive behavior patterns that, if exhibited by a spouse, spelled doom for the marriage. This psychologist claimed that within the first three minutes of observing a couple, he could tell with ninety-four percent accuracy whether they would be divorced in the next five or six years. One of the most destructive of the Four Horsemen was “stonewalling”-tuning out, evading, avoiding conflict.

Didn’t all men do that?

No, Lucy had insisted.

“Well,” he replied, “I’m not the angry sort. Sorry about that, but I’m just not.”

“What are you not telling me?” she asked.

“Lucy, come on, you’re making a whole lot out of nothing.”

“Are you still worried Abby spends too much time at the Galvins’?”

He shrugged. “Not especially. I mean, I wish she spent more time with her other friends. Given how volatile friendships between girls this age can be.”

“So you’re no longer worried about her head being turned by their wealth?”

“Their kids seem to have a good set of values…”

They’re good people, he almost said. Nice family. But he caught himself.

He didn’t know what to think about the Galvins.

“Maybe I’m not as concerned about them as I used to be,” he said.

He slipped out of bed-dressed in an old pair of gym shorts and a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt (Tunnel of Love Express Tour, 1988, purchased at the concert at the Worcester Centrum)-and went out to the kitchen to grab a glass of tap water.

Abby was still awake-no surprise; she was a night owl-and was standing against the refrigerator, spooning Ben & Jerry’s Red Velvet Cake ice cream out of the container. She held out the spoon. “Want some?”

“No, thanks.” He gave her a quick hug. “I love you, Boogie.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

He took a water glass from the cabinet over the sink, held it under the faucet, and lifted the handle.

“That ice cream won’t keep you up?”

She shook her head.

“Don’t forget to take Lactaid.”

“I know.” She paused. “Hey, um… you didn’t go to BC, did you?”

“Boston College? I went to Columbia. You know that. But BC’s an excellent college.” Was she actually thinking about which colleges she might go to? This was a historic moment.

“I know, I thought… I mean…” She hesitated a beat. “So why do you have a Boston College medal? I don’t get that. Did they give that to you or something?”

He froze. He watched the water brim over before he remembered to pull down the lever to shut off the flow.

He’d left his jeans on the floor outside the bathroom, setting, as always, a lousy example for his daughter. But why was she going through his pockets?

“Did I drop that thing somewhere?” he asked.

“My pen died, so I wanted to borrow one of yours and I didn’t want to knock on your bedroom door, you know, and disturb you guys.” An artful roll of the eyes. “So how come you have it?”

He shook his head vaguely. He was too weary to concoct a plausible lie and didn’t want to come off as defensive or angry and provoke her suspicion. “It’s a long story,” he said. “Boring and complicated. Now, come on, isn’t it your bedtime?”

“What?” she protested.

“And, Boogie-let’s not poke around in each other’s things, okay?”

23

Two days later, at a few minutes after five in the morning, Danny was awakened by the triumphal tritone plink of a secure text message on his iPhone. Lucy stirred in her sleep, mumbled, “What?”

“Sorry,” he whispered.

He grabbed the iPhone from the bedside table. He slid it unlocked, saw that the message was from AnonText007. MEET 9AM 75 WEST BROADWAY, SOUTH BOSTON. TAKE T.

Another meeting? He’d thought he was done with them. Now what was the problem?

The T was, in Boston slang, the subway. For some reason they didn’t want him to drive. What was that about?

He was too keyed up to go back to sleep, so he went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee.

By the time Abby awoke, he was wide awake and jittery.

She sat in silence in the front seat during most of the ride to school. Every half a minute or so, she’d change radio stations, dissatisfied with all of them. Her favorite hip-hop station was all talk. When she wasn’t changing radio stations, she was busy texting.

Ever since she’d become a teenager, Danny had given up trying to read her moods in the morning. She could be pouting or seething, or she could be just fine. She wasn’t a morning person. Anyway, sixteen-year-olds weren’t biologically programmed to get up at six thirty. He’d read that somewhere.

She hadn’t said another word about the Boston College medal she’d found in his jeans. Of course not. What had struck such fear in Danny’s heart was just one more minor scuffle between Abby and Dad, another one thrown on the pile, already forgotten.

“I hate this!” Abby said suddenly.

“What do you hate?”

The length of the drop-off line at school they’d just pulled into?

“This… stupid piece-of-shit flip phone!”

“Hey. Language.”

“Sorry. Piece of crap. It’s so hard to text on this thing. How come I can’t get an iPhone?”

“You want a Mercedes-Benz with that?”

“No, I’m serious. I hate it! None of my friends have flip phones anymore.”

“I know, life can be so cruel. First there’s that genocide in Darfur, then there’s the famine in Somalia, and then, worst of all, Abby Goodman is forced to use a last-year’s-model LG flip phone.”

Abby smoldered and didn’t reply. Too easy, Danny thought. Shooting fish in a barrel.

A car pulled up in the line behind him. Galvin’s chauffeured Maybach. Tom Galvin sat in the front seat, talking on his BlackBerry.

“We must be right on time,” Danny said. “We’re ahead of the Galvins.”

Abby turned, saw Jenna, waved.

“That’s not Esteban,” she said.

Danny glanced in the rearview mirror. “You’re right.”

“Maybe Esteban is sick. He must get sick sometimes.”

“Sure.”

When they pulled up to the front entrance of Lyman Academy, Abby allowed herself to be kissed, though on the top of the head, not offering a cheek.

“Have fun, Boogie.”

“How could I not,” she replied drily.

She pulled open the door and slinked out.

The high beams on Galvin’s car pulsed on, then off. “Danny,” called a man’s voice. Abby slammed the car door and scampered over to Jenna.

Danny turned to his right, then turned around, and saw Galvin’s hand out the window of his limo, waving at him.

“Got a sec?” Galvin called.

Danny pulled forward into the short-term parking area, off to one side, and the Maybach pulled alongside.

Danny got out, tense and smiling. His mouth was dry.

The driver had gotten out and come around to open the passenger’s-side door for Galvin. It definitely wasn’t Esteban. This one wore the same uniform, the billed cap and black suit and tie, but it fit him awkwardly, like something he’d taken off the rack at a uniform shop. He was around the same height and breadth as Esteban, but his build seemed more exaggerated: arms like ham hocks, a torso that tapered sharply. He looked brutish, like a wrestler or maybe a boxer who’d spent too much time in the ring. He had a small, sloped head atop a neck that was as wide as the head it supported, thinning black hair, deeply inset raisin eyes. His face was spiderwebbed with broken capillaries. His lips were purplish and fat, like two slabs of liver, and seemed permanently parted even when his teeth were clenched.

Galvin got out, nodding at his bodyguard.

He looked terrible. His eyes were bloodshot, with deep circles underneath and lines on his forehead Danny hadn’t noticed before. Galvin, who normally looked so polished and serene, looked like he’d been up all night.

He shook Danny’s hand.

Danny felt fear wriggle in his belly.

“Danny, I’d like you to meet Diego, my new driver. Diego, this is Mr. Goodman. He’s a friend of mine and, more important, the father of Abby, Jenna’s best friend. Danny and his daughter are very important people in our lives.” His left eye twitched almost imperceptibly.

Diego bowed his head and smiled somberly, exposing the glint of gold molars, then returned to the driver’s seat.

“Gotta make sure the new guy knows the key players in my life,” Galvin said.

“What happened to Esteban?”

Galvin’s left eye twitched again, very slightly. If you didn’t know him, you might not have noticed it. He seemed to have developed a tic. He sighed. “Esteban had to go back home to his family in Mexico. Not a good time to break in a new driver, but there’s probably no convenient time.”

“That’s a bummer.”

“Didn’t you say you play squash?”

“Well, I haven’t played in a while.”

“That’s okay. My squash partner canceled on me, and I need the workout. Would you be free for a game after work today?”

“I’m not a great player.”

“Neither am I. It’s just for fun.”

“I’ve got to do an interview this afternoon,” Danny lied. “Maybe some other time.”

He was almost positive he’d never told Galvin he played squash.

24

The location for the meet with the DEA guys was a diner in South Boston that looked like an authentic old diner out of the 1950s. Its exterior was shiny diamond-plate metal siding. A neon sign said MUL’S. Inside, it looked even more authentic, with red leatherette booths and stools, Formica-topped tables, and white-tiled walls. Behind a long counter edged with ribbed aluminum, a couple of line cooks were frying eggs and turning pancakes the size of dinner plates. Everything smelled like bacon and coffee and maple syrup.

Glenn Yeager was seated at one of the corner booths, facing the entrance, chowing down on a huge breakfast. Next to him was an open laptop, a black Toshiba. The booth looked to be strategically located. No other tables were close. They could talk openly.

“Where’s Bad Cop?” Danny asked.

Yeager replied through a mouthful of egg, “Change of plans.”

Danny sat down at the booth as a waitress appeared with a menu and a glass carafe of coffee and filled a chunky white mug. “Change?”

Yeager gulped down a few swallows of orange juice. Cleared his throat. He closed the laptop. “Phil’s checking out a lead. He might join us later.”

Danny shrugged. He wasn’t going to complain about Slocum not being there.

The waitress, copper-haired and big-busted, said, “Know what you want, honey?”

“I’m all set with just the coffee,” Danny said.

“Come on, Daniel, order something. Best breakfast in town.”

Danny shook his head and waited until the waitress gave up and left. “What’s this about? I thought I was done with you guys.”

“We’ve got a problem. We’re not picking up a signal.”

“The transmitter?”

Yeager nodded solemnly.

“That’s not my problem. I did everything right, on my end.”

“Unfortunately, it’s very much your problem. Until we get what we need on him, you belong to us.”

And here, Danny thought, was the flaw in their arrangement. He had no way of knowing whether they were telling him the truth. Maybe the bug in the dummy Boston College medal was working just fine but they wanted him to keep planting surveillance devices on Galvin. More and more of them, more brazenly, until he got caught.

Unless he’d already been caught. That thought had lodged in his head like a half-chewed bite of steak stuck in your craw. What if Galvin knew?

“Isn’t the thing voice-activated?”

Yeager nodded again.

“Maybe it’s not transmitting because he hasn’t been talking in his office recently.”

“But he has.” Yeager sounded almost mournful. “We’re picking up signal traffic on his home-office landline. Encrypted, so we don’t know what he’s saying, but we know he’s made several calls.”

Danny shrugged, shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you. I did my job.”

“Maybe you mishandled it. These little pieces of electronics can be delicate.”

“I didn’t even open the thing.” Slocum had opened the dummy medal for him and showed him the component inside. But he hadn’t shown Danny how to open it himself, since he didn’t need to.

“I believe you. Maybe it got jiggled. These things happen. Point is, it’s not transmitting.”

“Well, no way am I going back to his study,” Danny said. “He caught me in there-he came home unexpectedly when I was placing it, and… What if he figured out what I was doing? What if he opened the medal or just destroyed it, or…?”

Yeager blinked a few times but said nothing. He looked at Danny with dead eyes.

“Is it possible he discovered the bug?” Danny asked.

Yeager watched him a little longer. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

“Jesus.”

“Maybe his security people did a sweep.” He shrugged. “The fact that you’re alive indicates they don’t know you’re the one who planted it.”

“Well, I’m not going back into his study and planting something else. Absolutely not. I can’t.”

Yeager pointed with his fork to a reddish hillock on his plate. “They make the best corned beef hash here. Big chunks of brisket. Not that stuff that tastes like cat food you get everywhere else.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You want to try something that’ll take the top of your head off, get the homemade cinnamon bun muffin and ask them to grill it for you. I mean, it’s life-transforming.”

The waitress topped off his mug of coffee, even though he’d maybe taken two sips.

“He has a new driver,” Danny said.

“There you go.” Yeager shrugged and gave him another dead-eyed look. “The driver took the fall for you. He probably goes into Galvin’s office from time to time to get things for his boss, drive them into town. He’s a logical suspect.”

“So Galvin didn’t know it was me.”

“Clearly. Nothing was wrong with the transmitter. Safe guess his security people found it in a routine sweep.”

“And this poor guy gets killed.”

“Collateral damage. Better him than you, right?”

“Great,” Danny said, unable to muster much enthusiasm.

Yeager pulled a small black nylon Nike gym bag from the floor and set it on the table. He unzipped it partway and shoved it toward Danny.

He looked inside. There was a gadget inside not much bigger than an iPhone. He looked at Yeager. “Now what?”

“That little doohickey is called a MobilXtract. It’s made by an Israeli company for law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and it costs a buttload of money. Handle with care.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“It’s the only move we have left. We tried downloading a software agent to his BlackBerry, but no luck. This way is far more likely to succeed. All you have to do is plug it into Galvin’s BlackBerry and touch a few screen prompts, and in three or four minutes it’ll download everything. E-mails, text messages, contacts, you name it. Idiotproof.”

“All I have to do?”

“We get the information on his BlackBerry, we’ve got the case against him nailed down.”

“That thing never leaves his hands.”

“I doubt that.”

“I’m supposed to just grab it from him and start downloading…? This is insane.”

“It’s easy. All you need is the right opportunity.”

“No such thing. Look, it’s not my fault that your transmitter was discovered. I did my part. I don’t see why I have to risk my neck again because your plan didn’t take into account the possibility that Galvin’s security people would do a sweep.”

Yeager shrugged and took a heaping forkful of hash. He chewed for a few seconds and then said, through a mouthful of food, “You get points for trying. But until we have enough on him to justify an arrest warrant, you’re still on the hook.”

“Why did you want me to take the T here anyway? Why not my car?”

“Security.”

“Like I might be followed?”

“Or there’s a tracker on your car. It’s all possible.”

“If there’s a tracker on my car, that means they suspect me,” he reasoned. “Right?”

Yeager shrugged. “Maybe they’re doing their due diligence. Watching you, seeing who you meet with. Making sure you’re not working for the DEA.”

“And if they find out I am?”

“That’s why we’re taking measures to protect you.”

“What happens if they find out I’m meeting with the DEA?” Danny persisted.

“Why do you keep obsessing about this? You’re, like, picking a scab. Don’t keep thinking worst-case scenario, or you’ll be too scared to function effectively.”

“Yeah, well, he invited me to play squash with him.”

“You see? He definitely trusts you. That’s a great opportunity. Please tell me you said yes. I’m thinking he’s not going to be bringing his BlackBerry onto the squash court. Your opportunity has just presented itself.”

“I said no. Anyway, that’s not my point. He said I told him I played squash. I never told him that.”

“So?”

“How would he know I play squash? I don’t even know where my racquet is anymore.”

“Isn’t that an Ivy League kind of sport? You went to Columbia. That’s an Ivy League school, last I heard. He just figured.”

“Listen to me-”

The waitress appeared again to top off his coffee mug. “You sure you’re not going to have breakfast, sweetie?”

“I’m good,” Danny said.

The waitress looked disappointed, but she smiled and sidled away.

“He knows things about me I never told him,” Danny said. “It’s like he’s had me checked out. Like he’s been briefed about me. That thing about the squash, that was a slip.”

“And that surprises you? Your daughter spends a lot of time with his daughter, he lets you into his house, into his family’s life-you think he’s not going to be careful? He’s not going to have a backgrounder done on you? This is not a guy who trusts a lot of people. In his position, he can’t.”

Danny exhaled slowly through his nostrils. “Maybe that’s all it is.”

“That’s all it is,” Yeager said. He turned his head and smiled. “There’s your buddy.”

Danny turned and saw Phil Slocum approaching the booth, a beat-up leather portfolio in one hand. He looked grim, even grimmer than usual. He sank into the booth next to Yeager without even giving Danny a glance.

“You look like someone stole your lunch money,” Yeager said.

Slocum unzipped the leather portfolio, took out a brown file folder, and handed it to Yeager. “The body checked out.”

Yeager’s smile faded. He pulled out several 8 x 10 glossy photographs. “Dear God in heaven,” he said. “Goddamned animals.”

He handed one of the photos to Danny. “I would say they discovered the bug.”

It was a photo of a body so disfigured, the carnage so gruesome, that at first glance it didn’t even look like a human being.

Only when he saw the mole in the shape of Australia on the right side of what remained of the neck did he recognize Galvin’s driver.

25

“It’s him,” Danny said. “It’s the driver. Esteban.” Hot prickles of sweat broke out on his forehead, on the back of his neck. Hot acid burned his gullet, and he felt queasy, as if he might vomit. “Where did you find the…”

“The body was found in an alley behind a bar in Brighton. Covered by a plastic drop cloth. It was obviously a drug-related execution, and it looks like he was tortured, so the Boston Police drug unit caught it.”

Danny lurched from the booth, clattering his fork to the floor, and rushed outside, where he threw up on the sidewalk. A young couple carrying matching Under Armour gym bags were passing by at that moment. The guy shoved his girlfriend away from the trajectory of the vomit.

Danny remained bent over for a minute or so, head ducked, the world spinning and wobbling.

The photos depicted a work of sculpture made by Satan. An arrangement-a derangement-of a human body in parts. The man in the photo, though it was but a torso, was holding his own severed head, as if he were clutching a soccer ball. The head looked like Esteban’s head, but it also looked like one of those hyper-real latex Halloween masks, except for the horrific bloody innards of his neck and trachea that hung down raggedly, a torrent of dark blood.

The eyes were open slightly, as if he were falling asleep.

Stuffed into the head’s mouth, like discarded gristle on a butcher’s counter, was what appeared to be his own dismembered penis.

Danny returned unsteadily to the diner and stood at the booth.

“Was he one of yours?”

Yeager’s eyes widened. He glanced to either side. “Sit down, please.”

The booths on both sides of them were still empty. Danny slid into the booth, slowly and reluctantly.

Slocum said, “You really think if we’d turned Galvin’s driver, we’d be wasting our time with you?”

“Don’t shed a tear for Esteban,” Yeager said. “He was a low-level sicario for the cartel.”

“Meaning?”

“Enforcer. Hired gun.”

“Well, that could easily have been me.”

“It wasn’t,” Yeager said.

“Who did it?” Danny asked.

“The cartels have cells scattered around the country,” Yeager said. “There’s no shortage of muscle. We put out a BOLO and this report of a body came back. And checked out.”

“Isn’t this just going to lead back to Galvin?” Danny said. “As soon as the body’s identified. I mean, the driver to some rich investor is found tortured and murdered-”

“The body won’t be identified,” Yeager said. “Their security people will do their tricks with ID cards and fake passports. This guy here”-he tapped a pudgy forefinger on one of the glossies-“is a John Doe.”

Danny nodded, bit his lower lip. “Well, I’m out.”

Slocum made a slight movement, as if he were about to say something threatening, but Yeager put a hand on Slocum’s arm.

“This is not going to happen to you.”

Danny laughed bitterly. “Oh, right, of course not. How could I possibly think that?”

“If anything, this guy’s death is your protection. You’re off the hook.”

“But you guys have made it clear I’m still very much on the hook. You think you can keep pushing and pushing me until I’m found in pieces, rolled up in plastic somewhere?” He shook his head. “Uh-uh. I’m not meeting with Galvin again. That relationship is over.”

“Just like that?” Slocum said. “Suddenly you’re gonna cut off all contact? You don’t think that’s going to look suspicious? They find a transmitter, they finger the driver, and suddenly you’ve disappeared? They’ll know they got the wrong guy. You’ll just turn the klieg lights on yourself, buddy.”

Danny smiled unpleasantly. “Oh, no, it won’t be anything that obvious. I’ll be sick for a while. Then I’ll be way behind on a deadline, and I’ll make excuses. After a couple of months, he’ll give up. Relationship’s over. That’s all it takes.”

“And your daughter?” Yeager asked.

Anger flared up in him suddenly, a lighted match tossed into gasoline. Calmly, he replied, “My daughter has no idea what’s going on. Her relationship with Galvin’s daughter is innocent, and no one’s going to think different.”

Their waitress swooped in. “He’s the only one eating today? You boys aren’t hungry?”

Danny shook his head.

“I’d love the workingman’s special,” Slocum said.

“I’m sorry, honey, that’s only available till nine. Something else?”

“Then I think that crème brûlée French toast has my name on it.”

The waitress beamed.

“Danny,” Yeager said when she had left. “Who else do you think is going to protect you and your daughter?”

Danny felt his cheeks go hot. “What kind of protection are you talking about? Like those murderers are going to give you advance warning?”

“It’s highly unusual for them to target the DEA. They don’t want to go there.”

“But they do, don’t they? I’ve read about-”

“It has happened,” Yeager admitted. “But it’s rare, and the Sinaloa boys, well, they may be brutal, but they’re also smart enough to know not to take out DEA agents. They do, they’re in a world of shit.”

Danny stared at him with incredulity. “They thought Esteban was working for you guys.”

Yeager said calmly, “They executed the driver because he was a Mexican, Daniel. They thought one of their countrymen was a traitor, so they had to send a message. But they hardly ever do that sort of thing to us or to our people.”

“So what happens if I’m caught next time? How are you going to protect me then?”

“We’ll get you out of there. You and your daughter.”

“Like, the witness protection program?”

Yeager nodded once.

“You’ve got to be kidding. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to live that way. I’m not going to ruin my daughter’s life.”

“That’s the worst-case scenario, Daniel. It’s not going to happen.”

“Can you guarantee that?”

Yeager and Slocum were both looking at him now, but neither said a word.

“Right,” Danny said. “Look, I’m the only parent my daughter has. I’m not going to orphan her, you understand? You want to prosecute me for money laundering or whatever bullshit crime you come up with, go for it. Have at it. The fact that your little device got discovered, that’s not on me. That’s your screwup. I did exactly what you asked me to do. I acted in good faith. I cooperated.”

“Exactly,” Slocum said. “You cooperated.”

“Uh-huh. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t realize the position you’re in, do you?” Slocum said. “You don’t seem to get what we have on you, Danny boy.”

“What you have on me…?”

“You’re not pulling out now, my friend,” Slocum said. “Like the bank says, ‘substantial penalty for early withdrawal.’”

“Is that supposed to be a threat?”

“Sometimes the DEA leaks,” Slocum said. He took a long swallow of coffee. “I really hope that doesn’t happen in your case.”

And suddenly Danny understood what kind of position he was in. They would rather tip the Sinaloa cartel off that he was a DEA informant than let him get away.

He stood up.

“Daniel, please,” Yeager said.

Slocum put down his coffee cup. He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out his wallet, and took out two crisp new hundred-dollar bills. “Here,” he said. “Take Galvin up on that squash game. And buy yourself a decent squash racquet.”

26

The executive conference room of Harmonics Global, Inc., looked like a thousand other executive conference rooms in corporations around the world. Since the headquarters of Harmonics Global was located in San Diego, though, it had a kind of California feel. There was blond wood and large windows, a lot of glass and steel and copious light. A large Cisco TelePresence screen took up most of one wall. On the opposite end was a projection screen that retracted with a touch of a button. Twenty high-backed leather chairs ringed a gleaming elongated oval table made from African mahogany with purpleheart border inlay.

Harmonics Global was a large private portfolio company whose holdings included fourteen separate companies, ranging from auto parts to contract food services to insurance to freight.

Very few people knew who really owned Harmonics Global.

At the head of the table sat the CEO of Harmonics, a formidable woman named Laurie Hornbeck. Laurie knew that most people didn’t consider her a warm person. She was often called no-nonsense. Her division chiefs were afraid of her. Her blond hair was cut in a short, efficient bob that her detractors called mannish. She wore one of her habitual brightly colored suits over a white silk shell. Today’s color was sapphire blue. The only jewelry she wore was gold stud earrings and an onyx choker.

But Laurie Hornbeck was not running the meeting. That was the job of the chief financial officer, Allen Hartley, because the agenda this morning was the budget. It didn’t help that Hartley spoke in a monotone. His presentation, Laurie thought, was verbal chloroform. He talked about “optimized distribution networks” and “improved supply chain visibility.” He talked about an “end-to-end ROI-driven solution.” He talked about “deliverables” and “dollarizing” approaches and taking a “deep dive” into the data. Al Hartley droned as he went through his charts and graphs, and the directors of each division took notes on their laptops, and Laurie Hornbeck furtively checked her BlackBerry.

The rule at the monthly budget meeting was that all participants had to switch off their cell phones. Laurie Hornbeck, being the CEO, was exempt.

About halfway through the meeting, Laurie’s BlackBerry buzzed. She put on reading glasses and looked down at the text message that appeared. She cleared her throat and looked up. “Tony, Karen, Barry-in my office right now, please. My apologies, Al. I need fifteen minutes.”

She rose from the table.

Laurie Hornbeck’s office was flooded with light from the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Pacific. Her office was as efficient and as spare as her hairstyle. Her desktop was empty except for a few photos of her son, her laptop, and two phones, one of them secure. A clean desk meant an orderly mind. In one corner of the room was her bag of golf clubs. On the walls hung several paintings of Taos, New Mexico, by Helmuth Naumer, vivid pastels of pueblos and canyons. Laurie was from New Mexico and kept a vacation house in Taos and got back there whenever she could.

She kept her face calm, because a good leader must stay calm and confident. But she was acutely aware of the acid splashing the back of her throat. Of how violently her heart was pounding. This whole nightmarish development was all she’d been able to think about for days.

Two weeks chilling in Belize, she thought glumly. And now, back in the office just a few days, it was as if she’d never gone.

“It’s Omaha. We’ve sprung a leak,” she said. She kept her expression neutral, but she fidgeted with her onyx choker.

“What do you mean, a leak?” said a thin, dark-haired woman with a mournful look. She was the controller of Omaha Logistics, one of Harmonics Global’s top holdings. It provided freight-forwarding services to an array of corporate clients, transporting truckload freight in containers and trailers by land, sea, and air.

To almost everyone outside this room-occupied by the top three officers of Omaha Logistics-it looked like a legitimate company.

“One of our cargo jets was seized yesterday in Fresno.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Omaha’s chief operating officer, a pasty-faced, chipmunk-cheeked man with a potbelly. “Fully loaded?”

Laurie nodded. “Then yesterday a banker in the San Francisco office of Pacific Commerce Bank disappeared.”

“Mother of God,” the controller said quietly, her face growing ever more mournful. “It’s Toth.”

“What do you mean, disappeared?” asked the chipmunk-cheeked COO.

“He didn’t show up for work,” Laurie said. “He’s not at home. We pinged him and he hasn’t replied.”

“Do you think he’s in the wind?” asked Omaha’s chief financial officer, a handsome Latino-looking man with a light brown complexion and thick black hair combed straight back.

“Look, maybe he’ll turn up on a beach in Playa del Carmen with a nose bag full of coke and a bevy of barely legal hookers. But I doubt it. That’s not his speed.”

“But do we have any reason to believe he’s been arrested?” the Latino CFO asked with alarm.

Laurie shrugged. “We sure as hell better hope not. I don’t even want to think about that possibility. Because if he has…” Her voice trailed off. Her stomach roiled with acid. She needed a Tums. Lately she’d been chewing them like candy.

A breach, a leak-that was the nightmare scenario they all dreaded. If the truth were ever to come out about Omaha, they’d all go to prison.

Or-given who their true employers were-worse.

“We have to find the banker at once,” the CFO said. “Before he spills anything.” In times of stress like this, his Mexican accent became more prominent.

“Obviously,” said Laurie. “But by far the more important matter is the leak. We need to find out where it’s coming from. Or who it’s coming from. And then it has to be plugged. By whatever means necessary.”

“Toth has to be found and prevented from talking,” the controller said, her voice rising sharply. “Can we get to him? Stop him?”

Laurie looked at Omaha’s CFO but said nothing. She wanted this to come from him.

He picked up on her cue. “If we act right away, we can contain the damage. We have a contractor.”

The other three corporate officers fell silent. The chipmunk-cheeked COO shifted in his chair.

“This can’t be traced back to us,” the controller said.

“Obviously,” the CFO said. “He is reliable and discreet. This is a job that requires a great deal of finesse. He is in fact a surgeon.”

“Are we all in agreement?” Laurie asked.

Everyone but the CFO seemed to be avoiding her eyes.

“This is not going forward unless we’re unanimous,” she said. She waited. A course of action as fraught with danger as this, she wanted everyone’s sign-off.

“Yes,” said the controller at last.

“All right,” said the COO.

Laurie Hornbeck turned to the CFO. “Then make the call,” she said.

27

Riding the T from Broadway to Park Street, he texted Abby: pick up @ 3? He never called her at school, of course. Nor did he send e-mails; e-mails were for old people, she insisted. Abby texted throughout the day, between classes and even during some classes. She texted with the speed of a court reporter. She used abbreviations and jargon he didn’t understand.

She replied within two minutes: Thanks but going over to Jenna’s, OK?

No, not okay. No way. Danny texted back: Not today. I want you at home.

The train went through a tunnel, and cell service was unavailable, and by the time he reached the Park Street stop, he had a voice mail. From Abby. He didn’t even bother listening to the message. He knew she’d be pleading or squawking, or some combination. Only desperation would cause her to resort to the spoken word.

As he crossed the platform to board the Green Line train to Arlington Street, he called her back.

“Daddy,” she answered, voice taut. “Jenna and I are going to study precalc, I swear. I promise we’ll be working.” In the background a girl squealed.

“You can do that at home,” he said.

“But we’re studying together. I mean, like, why do I have to be at home when we’re just going to be on chat?”

“I’d like you to be at home today.”

The DEA guys were right: He couldn’t abruptly pull out of Galvin’s orbit without raising all kinds of suspicion. But Abby was a different story. She was the connective tissue. If she stopped hanging out with Jenna, then he could part ways with Galvin naturally, no questions asked.

He felt like he’d pulled the pin from a grenade and hadn’t yet tossed it.

“I mean,” she said, her voice getting high, “I could ask the driver to take me home at, like, seven, so we can have dinner, okay?”

He could see Esteban’s mutilated head, and he felt nauseated.

“I’ll pick you up at three,” Danny said with finality, and pressed END.

Then he called Tom Galvin at his office. “You still free for a game of squash?”

28

Danny had walked past the grand old brownstone hundreds of times and had always wondered what was inside. It was a federal-style mansion with a white granite façade, on the steep stretch of Beacon Street facing the Public Garden. The building was wider than its neighbors, with a double bow front.

Its porticoed entrance was unmarked. Just a burnished oak door with a polished brass knob and brass mail slot. Most of the buildings on this block were private residences; Danny had always assumed it was one of those mansions that had been in some Boston Brahmin family since the days of Oliver Wendell Holmes.

It turned out to be the Plympton Club, Boston’s oldest social and athletic club. He’d heard about it but didn’t know anyone who belonged. Until now.

Inside, the creaky floors were covered with oriental rugs, the walls covered with oil paintings of boats and birds. A couple of racks of deer antlers were mounted on the wall. Display cases held yellowed antique squash racquets and sepia photographs of players from early in the last century. According to a piece in Boston magazine he’d read online, the Plympton Club had six squash courts, a saline pool, and a court-tennis court, known by racquet snobs as a real tennis court. There was a library and an ornate dining room.

He waited on a hard sofa, gym bag on the floor, and tried to act nonchalant.

His discomfort at being in the Plympton Club was nothing, however, compared to his fear of the device in his gym bag being discovered. And how the hell was he going to get five minutes with Galvin’s BlackBerry? It never seemed to leave his hands.

And if he got caught…?

What happened to Esteban could just as easily happen to him.

Danny found it hard to believe that Tom Galvin, who seemed an affable, genial type, was in any way involved in the unspeakable murder-torture of his own driver. Maybe he didn’t even know about it.

But the people Galvin worked for were brutal and cold-blooded and terrifying. They wouldn’t hesitate to do to Danny what they’d done to Esteban.

If he were caught.

He had to be extremely careful. If there was the slightest chance of being caught, he had to back out of it.

The young blond woman behind the reception desk smiled at him and resumed stamping forms or something with an old-fashioned date stamp. A couple of middle-aged business types came in, laughing heartily about a “triple bogey.” They both wore blue blazers with brass buttons. One wore green pants with whales on them. The other wore khakis. They greeted the woman behind the desk, and she waved them through a doorway.

“I kept you waiting,” Galvin called out as he entered from the street.

Danny flinched, startled by Galvin’s voice. “Hardly,” he said, though it had been fifteen minutes.

The twangy guitar riff from “Sweet Home Alabama” played suddenly. Galvin fished his BlackBerry out of the breast pocket of his charcoal chalk-stripe suit.

“Marge, let’s push that up an hour,” he said loudly into his phone. “What? Hold on, the reception here sucks… exactly.” He ended the call and shook his head. The young woman behind the desk seemed to give him an annoyed look. “Sorry about that. Just one of those days. You got your gear?”

Danny lifted the gym bag by way of reply. “Everything I need. What’s with the ringtone, by the way? Some Alabama connection or something?”

He shrugged. “I like Lynyrd Skynyrd. ‘Gimme Three Steps’? ‘Free Bird’?”

Danny smiled. “Sure.”

“Didn’t you ever want to play guitar in a rock ’n’ roll band?”

“Sure, who hasn’t?”

They rode a small elevator down.

“Cell phone use is officially frowned on here,” Galvin muttered, sounding chastened. “It’s not done.” He affected the lockjaw used by Thurston Howell III in Gilligan’s Island.

“Impressive place,” Danny said.

“I prefer to use the word insufferable,” Galvin said. “But it’s convenient to my office.”

“My gym doesn’t have antlers on the wall.”

“Well, this place doesn’t have blacks, Jews, or women. Or Italians or Irish. With the glaring exception of me. Man, having me as a member is such a hair up their ass.” He beamed.

“Whose?”

“The stiffs who run this mausoleum.”

“They let you in.”

“They had no choice. They had to.”

Danny looked at him. The elevator descended sluggishly, juddering.

“You know, you can’t even apply for membership here. You get ‘tapped.’ You get nominated, and then they sound you out, then they interview you. You have to have dinner with the whole damned governing board, one at a time. Like an endless goddamned colonoscopy.”

“I guess you charmed them.”

“Charmed them? I saved their butts. This place was going under. The roof was literally caving in, but they didn’t have any funds in reserve to repair it, and the old boys refused to increase membership fees. They were talking about selling off part of the building or even shuttering the club altogether. So I stepped in and bailed them out. Made a long-term loan on generous terms.”

“In exchange for membership,” Danny said, smiling. “An offer they couldn’t refuse.”

Galvin grinned. The elevator opened on a low-ceilinged corridor that smelled faintly of eucalyptus. “Turned out I had all the right qualifications.” He lowered his voice, even though there didn’t seem to be anyone within earshot. “These a-holes think they’re better than anyone else because they didn’t have to work for their money. Great-grandfather earned it, which makes them aristocrats or something. Whereas guys like me from Southie, went to BC, whatever whatever, who have the chops to earn our own money, we’re gonna get blackballed…” His voice trailed off as a silver-haired older man passed by in a madras jacket with plaid pants. The man nodded and said, “Tom.”

Galvin nodded back.

“I saw that e-mail about the Galvin Fitness Center at Lyman,” Danny said. A notice had gone out from Lally Thornton’s office announcing plans for the new pool, track, and athletic facility, thanks to a generous gift from Thomas and Celina Galvin.

Galvin pushed open the heavy door to the men’s locker room. He sighed, grabbed a couple of towels, and tossed one to Danny. “Sometimes you gotta grease the wheels. No other school was willing to take her in for junior and senior years.”

He stopped at an attendant’s desk.

“¿Hola, José,” he said, “que tal?”

“Pues muy bien, Sr. Galvin,” the moon-faced, chubby attendant replied, handing Galvin a locker key on an elastic loop. “¿Y usted?”

“¡Bien, bien… ya sabes como va la vida!”

Danny wasn’t surprised that Galvin spoke Spanish, being married to a Mexican woman. But he seemed to speak with the fluency of a native. That surprised him.

“Sweet Home Alabama” came on again. Galvin pulled his BlackBerry out of his suit, gave José an apologetic smile, and headed toward a long bank of lockers.

“An hour, an hour and a half at the most,” he said into the phone. “We good? Okay.”

He hit END and put it back into his suit jacket pocket. “That’s how the world works,” he said, as if the conversation had never been interrupted. “Sorta like your robber barons. Vanderbilt and Carnegie and Rockefeller and Morgan-it took a couple of generations to wash the stink out of that money, right?”

“True.”

“Why are those guys ‘robber barons,’ anyway? Why aren’t they entrepreneurs?”

“Excellent question.”

“I mean, were they any different from Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or the guys who founded Google? And didn’t Rockefeller give away billions of dollars? I bet they all did, right?”

“One man’s robber baron is another man’s entrepreneur. Or philanthropist. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Robber baron or entrepreneur?”

Galvin waggled his head to one side, then the other. Like he was about to deliver a clever reply. But then thought better of it. “I’m an investor.”

“What kind of investor?”

“Private equity. It’s boring.”

“Not to me. Or probably to you.”

He heaved a sigh. As if he’d given this answer a hundred thousand times before. “I manage money for a very wealthy family.”

“Yeah? Who’s that?”

Galvin shrugged. “Do you know the names of the ten richest families in Mexico?”

“No,” Danny admitted.

“Then I don’t think the name would mean much to you.”

The locker room smelled of burnt towel lint from a dryer nearby, mixed with the smell of some kind of old-fashioned hair tonic, like Vitalis, and underlying it all the odor of musty gym clothes. There was a TV mounted high on the wall in a small lounge area. A stainless-steel refrigerator with glass doors containing an arsenal of dewy water bottles. A long sink counter equipped with combs in tall glass Barbicide jars bathing in blue disinfectant. Disposable razors, cans of Barbasol shaving cream. Rows of old-looking lockers made of dark wood, some with keys in their locks, metal tags dangling from their elastic lanyards.

The locker room was not quite deserted, but close to it. A few voices came from a distant locker bay. As far as Danny could tell, the only employee working the locker room was José the attendant. Not a lot of staff seemed to be employed at the Plympton Club, which fit the profile of a club under some financial duress.

A bull-necked guy in his seventies, powerfully built and covered in gray fur, strutted by totally naked, everything hanging out, towel around his neck.

Danny took note of Galvin’s locker, number 809, and found an available one nearby. Galvin’s gym clothes, he saw, were already in his locker, neatly folded. The club apparently did members’ laundry. A canister of Wilson yellow-dot squash balls on a shelf, a racquet on a hook. Galvin removed his suit jacket and draped it on a wooden coat hanger.

His BlackBerry was still in the breast pocket.

Danny changed into a white undershirt and an old pair of Columbia gym shorts. Galvin’s clothes looked brand-new: white shorts and a red-and-black shirt, both bearing the Black Knight logo. A blindingly white pair of Prince squash shoes.

The two middle-aged businessmen who’d come in before them were now leaving the locker room, squash racquets in hand, still talking golf. They wore old rumpled T-shirts (Harvard Crew and Phillips Exeter) and gym shorts with sagging elastic waistbands. Like they got their clothes from a heap in the homeless shelter where Lucy worked.

“Nice togs, Thomas,” Harvard Crew said.

“Thank you, Landon,” said Galvin.

“Very sharp. Are you playing in the US Open?”

Galvin smiled mirthlessly. He gave Danny a knowing look. Danny was familiar with that kind of faux-friendly rich-guy backstab. He heard it at Lyman, too. Two minutes later the guys would be privately mocking Galvin for his nouveau riche attire. For trying too hard.

Galvin slammed his locker door and turned the key to lock it.

The BlackBerry inside.

29

Galvin placed his stuff-his zippered racquet case, his locker key, a new can of balls, a towel-on the ledge outside the glass wall at the back of a court. Danny dropped his racquet case and towel right next to them and kept his locker key in his pocket.

Their warm-up was bumpy. Danny couldn’t settle on a grip. He kept mis-hitting the ball, either wildly high or too low. From the next court over, indecent grunts and moans echoed, like in some porn flick.

Danny was convinced you could tell a lot about someone by how he or she played sports. Was she a ball hog or a team player? Was he a mild-mannered guy who turned into a psycho on the court or the field? Spontaneous, or analytical?

Tom Galvin was deadly serious about his game. That easy wit, that contrarian sense of humor-it was all gone. He was a ferocious player. Not just that he was skilled, which he was-he had a pro’s sense of strategy-but he just didn’t give up a point. In his goggles, Galvin even looked like some kind of evil insect, a praying mantis.

Granted, Danny didn’t put up much in the way of competition, at least not at first. Once he’d been a decent player, at Columbia, but that was too many years ago. He was hardly in peak condition anymore. He was slow. He didn’t maintain control of the T. His serves were too easy.

Whereas Galvin’s serve was killer. He lobbed it in a perfect high arc: a lethal parabola that plopped down in the back corner far behind Danny, hit the nick, and died a nasty little death. Danny lost the first two games in short order before he began to figure out how to answer such a powerhouse serve.

In the third game, Danny finally pulled even with Galvin. Eight all. Then one of Galvin’s shots bounced twice, no doubt about it at all, which gave the serve to Danny and maybe even the winning point. To Danny’s surprise, Galvin picked up the ball and marched to the service box with no discussion.

“Uh, I’m pretty sure that was a double bounce,” Danny said.

“No, it wasn’t,” Galvin said flatly.

“Actually-”

“Ready?” Galvin moved into position to deliver another one of his killer serves. Danny almost persisted, almost said, “I saw it,” but decided it wasn’t worth it. Galvin knew damned well the ball had bounced twice. No point in arguing. His club, his ball, his rules.

It occurred to him that, with two guys as competitive as they were, playing squash wasn’t exactly a formula for camaraderie.

On the next point, Danny somehow managed to hit a soft drop shot from the forehand side, in the front right corner. Galvin, a half second late, came crashing into Danny’s left shoulder a split second after the ball hit the nick. He was obviously too late to have retrieved the ball anyway.

“Let,” he said.

Danny laughed. “No way you would have got that.”

“Dude. I called a let. You were in the way.”

His club, his ball, his rules. Danny let it slide.

After Galvin won the third game in a row, he said, “Best of seven?”

“Sure,” Danny said. “But how about a water break first?” He was dripping with sweat. The grip on his racquet was slippery.

“You’re trying to break my rhythm, aren’t you?” Galvin said. Twin rivulets of sweat coursed down either side of his face. “I think you’re trying to mess with my momentum.”

“Hey, whatever it takes.”

Galvin smiled and pushed open the glass door. The air outside the court was chilly, and it felt good against Danny’s face. Galvin grabbed his towel, jingling the locker key, and blotted his face with the towel. He gestured with a floppy wave toward the drinking fountain and headed over there himself.

“Actually,” Danny said, setting his racquet on the floor, “I’ll grab us a couple of cold water bottles, if you don’t mind.”

Galvin waggled a hand without looking back.

Danny stooped down, picked up Galvin’s locker key in what he hoped was one fluid gesture-an innocent mistake, he could claim-and went into the locker room.

He didn’t hear or see anyone else there.

He tried locker number 809 and found it locked.

Maybe that’s why they’re called lockers.

The locker room was still. In the silence he became aware of ambient noise from distant machinery: the wheezing and clattering of an industrial washer and dryer, maybe in a utility room nearby. The rush of water through the ancient sclerotic pipes. The muted whoosh of the ventilation system. A showerhead dripping, plinking, into a puddle on the tiled shower floor.

And over it all, his heart thudding. Faster than normal, but steady. He’d rehearsed this whole thing, had gone through it mentally over and over again, considering every angle he could think of, every possible hitch.

He turned the key and pulled it open, a sense of queasy dread coming over him. Galvin’s locker was orderly. His splendid chalk-stripe charcoal suit hung neatly on a hanger, which had been placed on a hook. On the top shelf was the spare can of Wilson yellow-dots and two neatly folded T-shirts, both new-looking. A very nice pair of cordovan cap-toe brogues, buffed to a mirror shine, had been carefully placed on the locker floor, both toe-in. Inscribed on the tan insole was a signature, John Lobb, probably the shoemaker.

The BlackBerry was in the left inside breast pocket of the suit.

Still no one around.

He couldn’t resist peeking at the label sewn on the inside pocket:

MADE IN ENGLAND BY

ANDERSON & SHEPPARD LTD

SAVILE ROW TAILORS

32, OLD BURLINGTON STREET, LONDON

Then there were some kind of numbers that looked typewritten, and a date: 22/08/11. Danny didn’t know much about the sort of clothes rich people wore, but he knew enough to recognize that a Savile Row tailor was a big deal, and those numbers and that date meant the suit was custom tailored.

Danny slid the BlackBerry out of Galvin’s suit jacket. It was on, but the display said DEVICE IS LOCKED. Meaning it was password-protected.

But he’d expected that.

Yeager had assured him that the MobilXtract was able to circumvent passcodes. He glanced at the time. Only two minutes had gone by, which wasn’t bad. Grabbing a couple of water bottles from the cooler in the locker room lounge would be a matter of a minute, a minute and a half. But add in a quick potty break, and four minutes wouldn’t provoke Galvin’s suspicions. Much longer than that, and Galvin would wonder what had happened and might amble back to the locker room to look for him.

So far, so good.

Then he was startled by a sudden blast of music.

The “Sweet Home Alabama” ringtone seemed louder than before. No doubt because it had pierced the stillness. He didn’t remember how to silence the ringer. He didn’t want to answer the call, just wanted it to stop playing Lynyrd Skynyrd. It keep blaring while he grabbed the phone wildly, hitting every button he could find on the sides and on top. Finally the music stopped.

When he heard the voice, he jumped.

José the attendant stood no more than ten feet away. He was a quiet one.

“Can I help you, sir?” he said.

30

Galvin’s BlackBerry felt warm in his grip.

He slipped it into the front pocket of his gym shorts and said, turning back to the locker, “There they are.”

Ignoring José, he took the canister of squash balls from the shelf, popped off the plastic lid, upended the tube, and dropped one into his palm. He affected an indifference to the attendant. As if the kid was a distraction, an annoyance. Nothing more.

He pocketed the ball, then looked around at José, as if he’d just noticed him. Now his disinterested expression turned supercilious. Danny had learned from his time as a Lyman parent. “Mr. Galvin would like a bottle of water. Uh, you know, agua? Could you please get me a couple? Thanks very much.”

As if the locker room attendant were his personal retainer. Which was probably how most of the club’s members regarded him.

In the arsenal of human expressions, arrogance was an effective weapon of offense. Whether or not José suspected Danny was rummaging around in Tom Galvin’s locker, he had a job to do. That was his first priority.

José shifted uncomfortably. He looked wary. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Of course.”

He could see Danny had opened Galvin’s locker. But was he there at Galvin’s behest? José would have to assume it. Whatever he thought, he would never dare accuse a guest of such petty criminality. Job security trumped loyalty every time.

The moment José was gone, Danny closed Galvin’s locker and raced to his own. Before Galvin’s phone could ring again, Danny unlocked his locker and set Galvin’s phone on top of his Under Armour gym bag.

Now José had returned, a water bottle in each hand.

“Thank you,” Danny said, taking them, setting them down on the bench. He smiled.

José nodded but didn’t smile back.

After José had circled back to his desk, Danny again opened his locker. He unzipped the end compartment of his gym bag and took out a wadded-up shirt, inside of which was the little oblong device.

Standing in front of his locker now, he worked quickly. He connected the MobilXtract gadget to the micro USB port on the side of Galvin’s BlackBerry. He’d already set up the MobilXtract as much as he could in advance, entering the model number of Galvin’s phone, selecting the option for working around the password, selecting EXTRACT ALL. Now all he had to do was press the START button on the thing and let it go to work.

The MobilXtract’s display came to life. It said DETECTING… CONNECTING… and then EXTRACTING CONTENTS.

A green progress bar came up. Yeager had told him it would take anywhere from forty-five seconds to three or four minutes, depending on how many photos Galvin kept on his phones. Photos, videos, and ringtones were the main memory hogs, Yeager had said.

But the progress bar seemed stuck. It was just a little sliver of green. It wasn’t moving. He waited. No voices in the locker room. Nobody else in sight.

He checked his watch. Four minutes had gone by. That was a lot of time, but he could finesse it. He’d got the water and used the john. Why not?

He looked again at the green progress bar, watched it inch along. Actually, inching wasn’t the right word. Millimetering, maybe. Slowly, slowly, almost unbearably so.

But at least it was moving, if incrementally. It was working. But this wouldn’t be finished in a minute or two. It looked like the job was going to take a while. Maybe five minutes. Maybe more.

He couldn’t stay here while the transfer happened.

He had to leave Galvin’s BlackBerry connected and go back to the squash courts.

It was a risk. A fairly big one, actually.

If Galvin abruptly decided to return to the locker room…?

But he had no choice.

Danny handed Galvin the bottle of water. His stomach was tight, but he managed to keep his facial expression relaxed.

“I’m all set,” Galvin said. He set it down on the floor, not far from where he’d earlier deposited his squash case and his key. The key that was no longer there.

Galvin’s key was in Danny’s pocket.

Looking at his watch, Galvin said, “Ready to rock ’n’ roll?”

Danny nodded. Somehow he had to get back to his locker, disconnect Galvin’s BlackBerry, and put it back.

Before Galvin noticed his locker key was missing.

Or decided he needed to use his BlackBerry, damn the club’s rules.

Powered by nervous energy, but even more by simple competitiveness, he played better and more forcefully than he had before the break. Maybe because he was beginning to learn Galvin’s serve, or maybe he just got lucky, but Danny returned the serve, hit a drive, and Galvin hit a drive back. Then Danny hit a backhand drop shot and scored a point. He’d pulled even. Eight all.

Then came a long rally. Not just a long rally, but the Bataan Death March of rallies. A cramp emerged in his left side, spreading and blooming, its raptor claws clutching and twisting his insides. The only noise in the court was the squeak of their gum soles on the floor and the th-pock th-pock th-pock of their racquets hitting the ball.

Galvin began panting.

Then Danny backed away from the ball and bent deeply, stepping back as if clearing space for a big backhand drive. But at the last second, he hit the ball softly. It kissed the side wall, barely touched the front wall, and there it died.

Galvin had lost the point and the game. He laughed loudly. “Ha! The old trickle boast! Nice!”

“Thanks.”

“Good job of-deception there.” Galvin gasped. “Ya got me.”

“Thanks.” Danny scooped up the ball to serve, but Galvin put up a hand to stop him. He was breathing heavily.

“You almost killed me.”

Danny smiled.

“All-right,” Galvin said. He leaned over, bracing himself with his palms on his thighs. He looked up at Danny, face dark, glowering. “The hell did you-do in the locker room?”

Danny’s stomach did a flip. “What?”

“That break you just took,” Galvin said. “I know what-you were up to.”

“Hold on…”

“That wasn’t a water break. You went-you found some Red Bull, right?” He attempted a pallid grin. “PowerBar, maybe? I mean, you musta taken something back there. Now, that-was a game.”

Relief flooded Danny’s body like a warm bath. He smiled, nodded. “Damn near killed myself. Listen, my bladder’s about to explode. Gotta use the bathroom real quick. This time I won’t take as long. Promise.”

“Gonna take another hit of that Red Bull, is that it?”

Danny chuckled. “Be right back.” It would take only about a minute to disconnect Galvin’s BlackBerry-the gizmo had to be finished hoovering up the data-and return it to Galvin’s locker.

“Know what?” Galvin said. “I think-it’s nature’s way-telling us it’s quitting time.”

Danny’s mind began spinning, a hamster on a wheel. He had to get back to his locker before Galvin opened his own and noticed his BlackBerry missing.

Before-oh God-Galvin realized his locker key was missing.

Screwed, he thought. Now I’m screwed.

“No way. I’m making a comeback.”

“Three to one-Danny-don’t know what kind of miracle you’re hoping for.”

“I thought we said best of seven.”

“Naaah, I’ve got to get back. Got an afternoon from hell ahead of me.”

“I’ll make it quick. You can spare ten more minutes, right?”

“Sorry, man. I’m-done. You’re welcome to stay and-do drills or whatever.”

“That’s all right. See you in there,” Danny said, hoping to get there ahead of him. When he reached the swinging doors to the locker room, he heard Galvin groan loudly.

“My damn locker key.”

Danny froze. Swiveled his head toward Galvin. “Oh, jeez. Sorry, man, I must have spaced out, grabbed yours.” He fished Galvin’s key out of his left pocket, held it out sheepishly, then tossed it to Galvin, who caught it in the air. “No wonder I couldn’t open my locker.”

“So where’s yours?”

“I got both. Don’t ask.”

Galvin looked baffled, shook his head. “Whatever.”

Danny pushed his way into the locker room ahead of Galvin. Galvin followed a few seconds behind, still breathing hard.

Danny went to his locker, unlocked it, and planted his body between the open locker and Galvin’s line of sight. The MobilXtract had finished. The entire contents of Galvin’s BlackBerry had been downloaded.

Now all that remained was to get Galvin’s phone back where it belonged.

Galvin was standing before his own open locker, staring inside. His breathing was slowing. His brow was furrowed. Like something was puzzling him.

Like he was looking for something.

Danny reached in, yanked his dress shirt off its hook and draped it over the BlackBerry and the MobilXtract. He held his breath, bracing himself for Galvin to notice the missing BlackBerry.

And if he did, then what?

He’d assume his memory was faulty. Anyone would. He’d be thinking that he didn’t really put his BlackBerry in his suit pocket. He just thought he did. When you reach middle age and you start to forget things, your memory’s no longer an unimpeachable witness. Maybe he left it somewhere, misplaced it. He wouldn’t be suspecting theft, not here, not in the Plympton Club.

He’d search his locker. Then look around to see if he’d dropped it.

Maybe he’d go ask José.

Instead, Galvin didn’t seem to be missing his phone at all, at least not yet. He was disrobing. So Danny did, too.

And realized the hitch in his plan.

Because if Galvin locked his locker and took his key with him to the shower, Danny wouldn’t be able to return the damned BlackBerry.

But would he lock up? You would at a gym whose clientele was sketchy. Not here.

Galvin didn’t.

He slammed his locker just before Danny did, and they headed for the showers.

But then “Sweet Home Alabama” came on. Muffled, but still audible.

Danny cursed silently.

Galvin stopped, turned, as if listening to the tune.

Or as if deciding whether to answer his phone.

Then he turned back and kept on going, and Danny, exhaling, followed. The showers were next to the restroom area with the sinks and toilets and urinals. Danny hung up his towel and entered an old-fashioned shower stall across the aisle from Galvin’s. It had once probably been deluxe but was now just old. White subway tiles covered the three walls, floor to ceiling, with little hex tiles on the floor. Brass shower mixer handles and escutcheon and a sunflower rain showerhead the size of a dinner plate.

Danny let the water run for all of ten seconds, the world’s fastest shower. It didn’t even have a chance to get warm. Then he shut it off, grabbed his towel off the hook, and rushed through the restroom area toward the locker, as if he’d forgotten his shampoo or something. Even though each shower stall had shampoo and soap dispensers.

He heard a squee squeee squee squee and glanced up to see José.

The damned locker room attendant, who seemed to have a sixth sense for when Danny didn’t want him around, was pushing a big yellow mop bucket and wringer on squeaky casters. He didn’t look up when Danny went by.

Danny needed ten, at most twelve, seconds to make the switch.

He had counted it out. Open his locker, take the BlackBerry, over to Galvin’s locker, open it, reach into Galvin’s suit jacket, slip it into the pocket.

Six quick moves. Twelve seconds, max.

He found his locker. Opened it.

Heard loud voices reverberating against hard walls.

“¿Como le fue el partido?” José speaking.

“Mas o menos.” Galvin. He, too, must have taken a brisk shower. José probably wouldn’t be talking to him if he were still bathing. That meant Galvin was out, maybe toweling off.

But maybe he’d take his time drying himself. Or stand in front of the mirror and comb his hair.

Danny opened his locker, yanked the USB cable out of the phone.

“¡Chinga, espero que el pegó fuerte!” said José.

He spun, located Galvin’s locker.

Then Galvin’s voice, louder and markedly closer. “¡Si, le gané bien facíl! ¿Como esta Andrea?”

Pulse racing, he opened Galvin’s locker. A sudden worry: What would he say if Galvin saw him? Sorry, wrong locker? I opened yours instead of mine? Preposterous and not credible.

Galvin’s chalk-stripe suit hung neatly on its wooden hanger.

Now José: “Pues si, señor, está muy bien, gracias a Dios.”

Without even looking, Danny jammed the BlackBerry into a pocket, the inside breast pocket of the suit, and-

Shut Galvin’s locker door just as Galvin hove into sight, towel around his waist, whistling.

He clearly hadn’t seen what Danny had just done.

Sweat broke out on Danny’s scalp.

“So what’s up for you now?” Galvin asked, opening his locker. “Back to work?”

“Gotta pick Abby up at school.”

“Right, right, it’s almost that time, isn’t it?” He put on an undershirt and then his crisp white shirt. “Sometimes I like to pick Jenna up, but today doesn’t work.”

They finished dressing. Galvin put on his suit coat. “This was fun. We should do it again. You’re a whole lot better than you kept telling me. Man, I mean, a trickle boast, right?”

“Sweet Home Alabama” came on. Galvin reflexively reached his right hand into his left inside breast pocket.

The tune kept playing. Galvin looked baffled. Fumbled around. His left hand reached into his right inside breast pocket.

His eyes narrowed.

“Strange,” he said, grabbing his BlackBerry. “I always keep it on that side.”

He answered the phone: “Yep?” Then, “I should be there in ten minutes.”

He ended the call. “I must be losing my mind,” he said.

As if he knew something was amiss.

31

Danny drove up to the pickup line at Lyman right on time, but he didn’t see Abby in the knot of girls hanging out in front of the school’s main building.

Nor was she among the girls trickling out of the front entrance. She was normally punctual. Maybe she was talking to a teacher. Maybe she’d misplaced something.

By the time Danny’s car reached the curb, the crowd of girls was thinning out, and still no Abby.

Leon Chisholm, in full traffic-cop mode, gave him a wave and a smile. “Haven’t seen her,” he said. Danny smiled back, hit her phone number on his iPhone.

It rang once and went to her voice-mail message, high-pitched and singsong. “Hi, it’s Abby, you know what to do!”

Leon waved him out of the queue, toward the short-term parking area just off the circular drive. “If you don’t mind,” he said. “So I can keep the trains running on time.”

“No problem.” Danny felt a flash of irritation. Normally, she couldn’t wait to get the hell out of school. It was possible, sure, that she had a good reason for being late. But she should have texted to let him know.

After five minutes or so waiting with the car running, he switched it off and walked into the school building. He saw a girl he recognized from one of Abby’s birthday parties a few years back at a Build-a-Bear Workshop where the girls made their own teddy bears. She was tiny and had a mop of curly hair and a sour disposition and was in the middle of an animated conversation with a much taller girl in a Lyman Crew warm-up jacket.

“Shira?”

The girl turned away from the crew jock. “Yeah?”

“You see Abby?”

“You mean, like, in school?”

“I mean, like, recently.”

Shira shrugged, shook her head, and turned back to her friend.

Danny checked his phone for a text message, maybe a voice mail that might have come in without the phone making a sound. That happened sometimes when the reception was spotty. Nothing there.

He didn’t remember what her last class was or where it took place. He didn’t remember where her locker was. But the school secretary-receptionist in the front office would know where she was supposed to be. It occurred to him that she might be sick, might have gone to the school infirmary. But the school was supposed to call him and say so. Maybe it had just happened.

All that speculation was pointless, he then decided. She was probably loitering at the lockers-wherever they were-with Jenna.

Though, come to think of it, he hadn’t seen Galvin’s Maybach limo in the pickup line, and there was no way the new driver was going to be late picking her up.

He looked around, fully expecting Abby to appear, sheepish or defensive or some combination of both.

But she wasn’t there.

The school secretary, Mrs. Gifford, a grandmotherly white-haired woman with apple cheeks who was probably ten years younger than she looked, smiled at him as she finished a conversation and then hung up the phone.

“Looking for Abby?” Mrs. Gifford said. She knew the names of all the school’s students and could identify all the upper classmen by face.

“She didn’t sign out early, did she?”

She donned a pair of reading glasses on a chain around her neck and consulted her computer screen. “She was here today, but you knew that. And, no, she didn’t sign out early. Unless she left early and forgot to sign out as they’re supposed to.”

“Where was her last class?”

“Well… human sexuality, in Burke 203.”

“How do you get there?”

It was a long trek through the main building and into the adjoining one, Burke Hall, a maze of jags and blind alleys and staircases up and down and up and down again. He saw a pretty black girl named Carla who was a friend of Abby’s, or at least used to be.

Carla had seen Abby at lunch but had no idea where she was now.

Abby wasn’t in or near the classroom where her last class had been held. Danny checked his iPhone, obsessively now, for a text or a voice message or an e-mail. He called her mobile phone and it went straight to voice mail.

She was nowhere in school to be found.

So maybe she had disobeyed his order and gone home with Jenna, before dismissal. Somewhere in his call log he had the Galvins’ home number, he was sure. He’d called the house once or twice. Celina Galvin had called his cell once, he recalled. But when he located her incoming call in the call history, it was marked BLOCKED. He searched for the outgoing calls he’d made to their house but didn’t find any. Maybe, in fact, he’d never called their landline. Celina had called him once, and he’d called Abby’s cell when she was over there. No use in trying directory assistance to find their home number. It would be unlisted for sure.

Well, Galvin was never without his BlackBerry. He called that number, and it went right to voice mail. Damn. Using his phone’s browser, he found the phone number for Galvin Advisers in Boston and called it. He got one of those infernal voice-mail prompt menus that tell you to enter the four-digit extension of the person you want to speak with, or press 9 for a company directory. He pressed 0, then pressed it again, until an operator came on the line, and he asked for Tom Galvin’s office. A woman answered Galvin’s line and said he was out of the office and she had no information on when he was returning, and she had no way of reaching him, and would he like to leave a message? He did. He said it was urgent.

He called Lucy, on the off chance that she might know something.

“I haven’t talked to her,” Lucy said. “Was she upset about something?” Traffic noise was loud in the background wherever she was. On Danny’s end, in the school hallways, it was getting quieter.

“No. Well, yes, maybe. I told her to come home after school and not go over to the Galvins’.”

“Oh, really?”

“She naturally wasn’t happy about that.”

“Did she refuse?”

“Refuse? No.”

“Did she sound upset?”

“Annoyed, maybe.”

“Angry at you?”

“Probably, but what else is new?”

“So maybe she took the T home.”

“She knew I was picking her up, like always.”

“Sure, but maybe she felt insulted. Belittled, as if you were questioning her judgment.”

“Of course I was questioning her judgment. She’s sixteen.”

“Maybe she felt infantilized.”

Infantilized. Shrink talk. But he knew better than to point it out.

“So she rebelled by taking the train home, to remind you she’s not a kid anymore. Or to punish you, show you she didn’t want to get a ride with you.”

“Infantilized.” It just slipped out.

“Danny. If she was on the T when you called and the train was underground, she wouldn’t have cell phone reception and you’d get voice mail. Just try her again.”

“Yeah, well…” He’d called her five or six times by now. Unless her train was stuck underground, she couldn’t still be on the subway. “If you hear from her…”

“Of course. You’re not scared something might have happened to her, are you?”

“Gotta go,” Danny said.

But he couldn’t keep that image from violating his thoughts, that grotesque photo of Galvin’s chauffeur Esteban, horribly butchered. Abby was the most precious thing in his life, and what’s most precious to us is our greatest vulnerability. If someone had taken her, kidnapped her…

But he couldn’t allow his thoughts to veer off that way.

He felt oddly remote from the halls around him, covered with drawings and projects. Bulletin boards about club activities and games, and cubbyholes for the younger girls. Unsettling self-portraits on the wall, executed with creepily disproportionate features, a gallery of present and future body-image issues. It was like he was floating in midair, seeing everything through the wrong end of a telescope.

He returned to his car and got in and tried to clear his head, to think of what to do. He checked and rechecked his phone for voice mails, for texts that might have popped up, might have slipped by unnoticed, but there were none.

He flashed back to an incident he didn’t like to think about, years ago when Abby was three, maybe four. He wondered whether all parents had something similar happen to them. Sarah had some function after work, so he’d taken Abby to the Prudential mall.

Her favorite store was an overpriced candy shop with a display case of chocolate truffles and chocolate-covered pretzels and white chocolate peppermint bark and dried pineapple crescents enrobed in milk chocolate. A revolving rack of huge multicolored lollipops. But Abby was always drawn to the Plexiglas bins of radioactively hued jelly beans.

He had said no, no candy today, and they went to the food court to get her a slice or two of pizza. Standing in a long line, he turned, and she was gone.

He looked around, gripped with panic. She wasn’t there; she was nowhere in sight. Heart racing, he walked through the hordes of tourists, didn’t see her, knew she’d been abducted. I looked away for a second, he’d say later.

He found her two minutes later at the candy shop, shoveling red jelly beans into a clear plastic bag. The longest two minutes of his life.

Maybe that was all that had happened. Red jelly beans. Because if what had happened to her was anything like what he feared, he didn’t know what he’d do. He couldn’t go on living.

Leon Chisholm approached, stiff-legged, and Danny rolled down the window.

“Abby in trouble?”

In trouble? he thought. What’s he implying, what does he know? And then, the realization: “Oh, no, she’s not being kept after school, no.”

“You look shook up.”

“I’m fine, everything’s… I just don’t know where the hell my daughter went.” He tried to sound annoyed, not scared.

“The junior and senior girls, a lot of them go over to the food court down the block after school. Where the hospital is? They get pizza or ice cream or have a bagel or what have you. I see them heading over there in little gangs.”

“But you didn’t see Abby, right?”

He shook his head. “Nor her friend Jenna.”

“It’s the damnedest thing.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

He texted her: Where R U????? and waited for her reply, but nothing came. He waited for the word delivered to appear in little letters under the text, a reassuring confirmation. But it hung there in a green balloon, a dialogue bubble in a comic strip. And nothing came back. He called her cell again.

Finally, he realized, stupidly, that he hadn’t called the one, most obvious place: home. She must have gone home on her own, sulking, and turned off her phone. She had a house key, after all.

No answer.

In the old days of answering machines, he could have spoken after the beep, and if she was there, she would have heard. And picked up. But that didn’t work in the age of voice mail.

He pulled out of the circular drive and drove the few short blocks over to the medical area. The traffic was heavy and there were no parking spaces. He double-parked and raced into the food court, moving from the bagel place to the pizza place to the coffee place to the ice cream place, and she wasn’t there. The tables were crowded with people, a few tables of girls just a few years older than Abby, some looking Abby’s age, but none of them Abby.

He returned to the car with his heart pounding in his ears and found a Day-Glo orange parking ticket tucked under a windshield wiper. He didn’t care. He got into the car and gunned the engine and barreled through a yellow traffic light, and drove to Marlborough Street.

No parking spaces there, either. He double-parked and ran up the front steps of his building. Keyed himself in and took the stairs to the second floor, and as he put the key in the lock, he rehearsed the angry words he was going to speak.

But she wasn’t home.

He collapsed onto the couch, gripping his iPhone, feeling at once hollow and nauseated.

He was finding it hard to keep the terrifying thoughts from intruding now. The simple logic of the cartel’s enforcers taking his daughter. Of course they would. He cursed himself for ever having let himself get involved in this. He should have taken his chances with the lawyer and the court system, and his daughter would be here with him, instead of…

He called Galvin’s cell again and it went to voice mail, but he didn’t leave a message. He called Galvin’s office and asked for Galvin and got the same unhelpful secretary. “He must have left early for a meeting out of the office, Mr. Goodman. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

Danny found it hard to believe that Galvin’s secretary couldn’t locate him precisely at any moment, but he said, “I’m a friend. As I told you. What’s his home number?”

“I’m sorry,” she replied quickly. “We don’t give that out.”

“You see, the problem is that my daughter’s missing, and I need to know whether she might have gone home with Jenna. My daughter is Abby Goodman. Can you at least call Celina and ask if she’s there?”

A pause. “Certainly, can you hold?”

In a little over a minute, she returned to the line. “I’m sorry, Celina’s not home. None of the family is there. I wish I could help you. I know how worried you must be.”

“Thanks for trying,” he said, and hung up.

He called Abby’s phone and called it again and again. He texted her again. He searched his call log for missed calls.

You heard things like the first thirty-six hours after a disappearance were the most important. Or was it the first twelve hours? He didn’t remember.

But he knew he should call the police and report her missing, that was the first thing to do.

File a missing-persons report with the police and look forward to that moment, maybe an hour from now, when his phone rang and it was Abby, and there’d been some sort of misunderstanding, and he’d have to call the police back sheepishly. He would be delighted to be made a fool of.

He just wanted her back.

If… if the cartel enforcers had done… something… (he wouldn’t let himself complete that thought. Just… something) they would contact him and make a demand.

And he would instantly comply, whatever they wanted.

If they wanted blood, he would gladly offer himself up. If they would let her go, he’d submit himself to the same torture they’d inflicted on Esteban. Just as long as they let her go.

His iPhone rang, and he heaved a big sigh until he looked at it and saw it wasn’t Abby.

Heart hammering.

“No,” he said to Lucy. “Nothing. I looked everywhere. You didn’t hear from her?”

“This is weird, Danny.”

He just exhaled.

“It’s not like her.”

“No.”

“She wouldn’t have, I don’t know, gone somewhere on her own, right? I mean, a pretty sixteen-year-old girl, she’s not-”

“Don’t, Lucy. Just… don’t go there.”

“I’m sorry. Danny, you should probably notify the police.”

“You’re right.”

“I mean, it’s just a formality, the sort of thing you’re supposed to do, because I’m sure she’s on her way home, and it was a big misunderstanding, that’s all.”

“Right,” he said dully, and at that moment, he heard a key turning in the lock.

32

“Where were you?” he said. Torn between towering relief and towering anger, he tried his best to keep his tone neutral. But there was no disguising the quaver in his voice.

Abby seemed smaller, as if she had shrunk into herself, the way a pill bug rolls itself up into a tight ball when threatened. Her cheeks, normally brushed with pink, were bright red, but that could have been from being outside in the cool air. Her metallic-glinting scarf was wound around her neck several times. Her fine blond hair flew away in wild hanks.

“Shopping with Jenna,” she said. “What’s the big deal?”

He got up from behind his desk and approached slowly. “What’s… the big deal? What’s the big deal? You didn’t get my phone messages or my texts?”

“I turned off my phone.”

“You turned off your phone.” Steady, he told himself. Cool it. “When have you ever, I mean ever, turned your phone off? What the hell did you have it off for?”

She shrugged. “I was trying to save the battery.”

“That thing has never been turned off since I bought it for you, not once.”

“That’s not true.” She kept looking to the side, as if avoiding his eyes, as if afraid he’d see through her. She unwound her scarf.

“Can I see your phone, please?”

“For what?”

“I want to see the times of the text messages you sent. I want to see if you were on your phone during the last couple of hours when I was desperately trying to reach you, when I thought something bad might have happened.”

“Like I’m some kind of criminal, that’s why you want to look at my phone? Like you don’t believe me?”

“How come you won’t look at me?”

She pulled off her jacket, head still turned away. She circled around to her right and walked toward the bathroom. “I have to use the bathroom, okay?”

“Hold on a second.” She kept walking. “Will you stop, please? We’re talking.”

Without turning to look at him, staring at the bathroom door, she said, “What… do you want… to know?”

“You didn’t know I was picking you up at school?”

“Oh, I see, so you’re pissed I didn’t tell you I was going to walk around Newbury Street with Jenna?”

“I told you to come home.”

“I’m home, aren’t I? You didn’t say I had to come home the second school was out.”

“Any reason you didn’t tell me what your plans were? So I didn’t have to waste my time driving over to Lyman and waiting in line and then spending half an hour asking everyone at school where you’d gone? And thinking something had happened?”

She stared straight ahead. She still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I screwed up. I should have told you but I forgot, okay? What do you want me to do now? Am I going to get grounded for a year or something?”

“Look at me.”

“Can I please just use the bathroom? I’m, like, about to pee my pants.”

“Look at me.”

She turned to her left ever so slightly. “Okay? Can I go now?”

“Turn around all the way. What are you hiding?”

She compressed her lips, furrowed her brows. Then she turned so she was looking straight at him.

“What the hell is that on your nose?”

“What does it look like?”

“Is that…?” He came closer. “Is that a ring in your nose? Did you pierce your nose?”

Quietly now, she said, “Obviously.”

A small metal ring ran through her right nostril and through the side of her nose. He stood a few feet away. “You pierced your nose?”

“So?”

“Did we ever talk about this? Did you ask my permission?”

“It’s my body. I have the right to do whatever I want.”

“No, you don’t, actually. You do not have the right to get piercings or tattoos or anything of the kind, anything permanent, without clearing it first with me. Are you out of your mind?”

“You would have said no anyway.”

“You’re damn right I would have said no. What the hell gives you the right to pierce your nose, like a, a…”

“Hey, it’s done, okay? Keep up.”

“I don’t believe this. I don’t believe you defaced your body, put a ring through that beautiful nose. I mean, for God’s sake, that’s going to leave a permanent scar.”

“No, it’s not. I asked her, and she said if I ever decide to take it out, it’s going to leave a little freckle, that’s all.”

“Where did you have this done? Do you realize what kind of infection you might have?”

“Oh, come on, is that what you’re worried about? She was almost like a doctor. I mean everything was sterile and she uses a disposable needle and changes it every time, and she was, like, totally anal about, oh, you have to clean it with salt water and you have to put in the right kind of earring, not sterling silver, only fourteen-karat gold or surgical steel or titanium. I mean, she was totally totally crazy sterile about everything.”

“Oh, Jesus,” he said, and he thought, She’s right here, she’s alive, nothing happened, no one took her. Tears came to his eyes. “Don’t ever do that again.”

She noticed his tears and looked at him with alarm.

“This isn’t just about piercing. Don’t you ever ignore my phone calls and text messages. Ever. Do you hear me?”

“What is the big deal? What are you afraid of?”

“Two pretty sixteen-year-old girls going around the city by themselves, going into body piercing places or whatever, you’re a target.”

“Oh, please. That’s ridiculous. It was daylight and we were on a busy street with a lot of people around me. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Jesus, Boogie.” He came close and put his arms around her, flooded with relief. She kept her arms stiff at her side, didn’t hug back, her mouth downturned in anger. “I was scared out of my mind, sweetie. Don’t ever do that to me again.”

Finally, she put her arms around him, her face pressed against his chest. “I’m sorry,” she said, her words muffled.

“It’s okay.”

She sniffed. “Actually, I really do need to use the bathroom.”

He released her.

When she came out, he was sitting on the couch, waiting for her. “Boogie, come over here for a minute.”

“I have homework.”

“It can wait. Come over here and sit down.” He patted the sofa next to him. She sat down in a chair on the side of the sofa.

“What?”

“Listen. We need to talk about the Galvins.”

“What about them? You didn’t say I couldn’t hang out with Jenna. You just said I couldn’t go over to their house tonight.”

“I don’t want you going over there anymore. I don’t want you getting a ride in Mr. Galvin’s limousine.”

He’d made a decision, finally. Earlier it might have raised eyebrows, his keeping her away from the Galvin family. But Danny could handle it, let Galvin know the loan had nothing to do with it. He’d just say it was about strengthening the father-daughter relationship.

“What is this? All of a sudden you don’t like them? I thought you liked Jenna.”

“I do, absolutely. She’s a great friend. I don’t mind if she comes over here, or-”

“I am not inviting her over here to see this place. You saw what their house is like.”

“If she’s really a friend, she’s not going to judge you based on the fact that your daddy isn’t rich, all right?”

“What’s the difference if I go to her house or she comes here?”

“You’ve been going over there way too much, and you know it.”

She paused, frowned. “So I won’t go over so much, okay? Is there, like, something you don’t like about them? Like they’re a bad influence?”

“I’d like to spend a little time with you once in a while, you know?”

She shrugged. “I mean, it’s not like we have a lot to talk about.”

“Ouch,” he said. “I don’t agree, but if you feel that way, let’s work on it.”

“It’s too intense. It’s like being under interrogation every time we have dinner, like you want to know every last thing about what I’m doing and how I’m feeling…”

“So I won’t interrogate you so much. We’ll just keep it lighter.”

“Is this because you think Jenna made me get my nose pierced? Because that totally wasn’t what happened at all. We both did it. She didn’t make me do anything.”

“That’s not it. I just don’t want you going over to their house anymore or riding in their limousine. Okay? Are we clear?”

“I know what this is about. I know about the loan.”

“Loan?”

“He lent you, like, a hundred thousand dollars or something, right? Because you’re going broke.” She turned to face him, accusingly. “You’re just embarrassed about it. You don’t like me seeing how they live, and we live like this. Isn’t that what it’s really about?”

He felt a flush of shame and a quick pulse of anger. He hadn’t told her anything about the money Galvin had lent him. What if Galvin had told Jenna he’d taken care of the Goodmans’ money problem, don’t worry about it…? If he had… well, he just shouldn’t have. That really wasn’t her business.

“Abby, that’s not it at all. I just don’t want you going over there anymore.”

She stood up, staring at him furiously, smacked her hands against her thighs. “Why don’t you just admit it’s punishment? You’re pissed off I didn’t ask your permission to get my nose pierced and now you’re punishing me by trying to keep…” Her words came all in a rush now, high and run together and indecipherable. Her face was red, and tears glinted in her eyes.

“Boogie. This is not punishment.”

“-the one thing that makes me happy, my best friend, and you want to take her away from me!”

“Abby!”

She turned and ran to her bedroom. He sat back in the couch and folded his arms and stared into space.

He almost wished he could tell her what was really going on.

Almost.